Day 121 Nat'l Emergency: Disaster for Trump or the Country? The People Will Decide

The letter in Wednesday’s New York Times called the Trump presidency a “disaster, a record he can’t run on.”

I share the sentiment but disagree with the analysis.

One need only look to the Supreme Court and federal judicial appointments to recognize that for conservatives Trump has been a most successful president, defanging consumer and employee protections, undercutting Obamacare, dissolving the wall that separates church and state, providing religious cover for discrimination against women and minorities. It is a record Trump is proud to run on.

Or one could look to a watering down of environmental protections to realize Trump has succeeded in poisoning our atmosphere, polluting our rivers and lifting safeguards on national lands, to know that Trump has handed big business successes they never imagined. It is a record Trump is proud to run on.

One could look at our frayed international relations to see Trump has succeeded in making America a shadow of its once dominant position in the world, just what the isolationists along with Russia and China hoped to achieve. It is a record Trump is proud to run on.

One need only reflect on the universal meaning of the Declaration of Independence and Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address to comprehend that Trump has succeeded in pushing back against the twin drives for equality and tolerance for women and people of color to the joy of white supremacists. It is a record Trump is proud to run on.

One need only listen to the venom within political discourse to appreciate that Trump has succeeded in dehumanizing and demeaning political engagement, reducing it to an exchange of insults rather than ideas. Bullying vs. compromise. It is a record Trump is proud to run on.

One need only close one’s heart to the sorrow seeping through our land from Trump’s failure to act decisively in a timely manner to thwart the spread of the coronavirus, to accept Trump’s dismissal of science and medical expertise as a success against coastal elites. In his failure to express compassion for victims and their families, in his disdain for wearing a mask and shutting down schools and places of work, Trump not only places more importance on dollars over deaths but suggests a variation of his rebuke of John McCain, that he doesn’t like servicemen who become prisoners of war—he apparently doesn’t like anyone weak enough to succumb to COVID-19.  It is a record Trump is proud to run on.

Trump has brought the country to a tipping point.

It is said the only perfect vision is 20/20 hindsight. Four years ago one could only assume the worst based on his rhetoric.

Now, in 2020, Americans must choose if the trail Trump has led us on for four years deserves another four years. Or if the process of reconciliation can begin with a new president committed to our founding ideals no matter how imperfectly they have been realized in the past. 

Polls show Trump has support from less than 50% of the population. It is up to the majority to disavow Trump and his enablers in the House and Senate. Only the majority can turn Trump’s reelection campaign into a disaster—for him or for the country.

Speaking Factually and with a Little Perspective

I am no less guilty than anyone else, but I detect our collective ability to speak or write correctly—and by that I mean factually even more so than grammatically—has eroded to the point where we make casual mistakes that can shift the public dialogue. Take, for example, a comment from Monday night’s The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.

While discussing the assault on the Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs last week, Noah said, “If I had to imagine the type of person who would shoot up an abortion clinic …” 

Noah fell into the all-too-common trap of calling Planned Parenthood “an abortion clinic” instead of recognizing it as a women’s health clinic that provides reproductive health services including abortions. 

Robert L. Dear Jr.’s murder of three last week was an example of domestic terrorism, yet too few in the media have recognized it as such. 

Speaking of terrorism, and the threat thereof, is it not disingenuous of Republicans to want to prevent Syrian refugees from entering the country because they fear one or more of them may attack us while they stubbornly refuse to limit alleged security risks on the government’s No Fly List from legally obtaining firearms? They claim it would undermine Second Amendment rights even though it is far more likely those already deemed possible terrorists would kill Americans than the refugees seeking a peaceful life within our borders.

The debate on Syrian refugees has mostly focused on the quality and extensiveness of the vetting process. Here’s a link to an article written by Scott Hicks,  a longtime immigration lawyer, detailing the process: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/cosmostheinlost/2015/11/19/exclusive-longtime-immigration-lawyer-pastor-explains-the-refugee-process/

Founding Fathers and Other Disreputables: How to explain the Donald Trump phenomena and how long it might last—The Washington Post tried in a Thursday article which contained the following illuminating paragraphs:

“Trump is a loud­-mouthed person, yes, and he does sometimes just say things to women to hurt their feelings,” an Indiana woman said during a late-October focus group of GOP primary voters conducted by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.

“But I’m going to stick with my belief saying that he’s going to try his best to get the country back the way our Founding Fathers had it at one time” (http://wapo.st/1Sk2Glw). 

The scary part of this seemingly blind support for a racist, a bigot, a dissembler, a sexist, a nativist, an ignoramus when it comes to history and other topics, is that too many Americans share those beliefs. It only validates my belief that we are a nation with too many idiots.

Let’s consider her desire to get back to the way our Founding Fathers had it at one time. Does that mean she condones slavery? That Afro-Americans are to be considered three-fifths of a person? Is she okay with the idea that women were not entitled to vote? For that matter, many white men were not eligible either—in most states you had to be a landowner to earn the right to cast a ballot. Does she favor state legislatures picking U.S. senators rather than direct elections by voters? And should we vote separately for the vice president? 

The Founding Fathers got lots of things right. But they also left out lots of stuff. Do we want to abandon our national parks, for example? Or social security? Or the protections afforded by the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Drug Administration, the FBI and other agencies that protect us from enemies within and outside our borders?

Trump is not alone in his depiction of foreigners—Syrians and Mexicans, to name two groups—as being unfit for residence within the United States. Yet, the provenance of their remarks can be traced back to the 19th century. In her book Team of Rivals, The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, Doris Kearns Goodwin quotes U.S. Senator Stephen Douglas (D-IL) during one of the famous Lincoln-Douglas senatorial campaign debates of 1858: 

“The signers of the Declaration of Independence,” said Douglas, “had no reference to negroes at all when they declared that all men are created equal. They did not mean negro, nor the savage Indians, nor the Fejee Islanders, nor any other barbarous race. They were speaking of white men. … I hold that this government was established for white men and their posterity forever, and should be administered by white men, and none others.” 

Apparently, even a president considered one of our greatest, Woodrow Wilson, shared some of Douglas’ beliefs and prejudices. In the words of a New York Times editorial, “He was an unapologetic racist whose administration rolled back the gains that African-Americans achieved just after the Civil War, purged black workers from influential jobs and transformed the government into an instrument of white supremacy” (http://nyti.ms/1OfBkxV). Our commander-in-chief turned out to be a discriminator-in-chief. It’s no wonder Princeton University students want Wilson’s name expunged from the school he was president of before being president of the United States. 

Discrimination against Native Americans, along with disregard for a Supreme Court ruling, stained Andrew Jackson’s presidency, though it is doubtful many of his contemporaries thought so. Jackson forced the Cherokee Nation off of its land in the Southeast and relocated it in the “Trail of Tears” to Oklahoma. In doing so Jackson refused to uphold a ruling by the Supreme Court that “made the Indian Removal Act invalid, illegal, unconstitutional and against treaties previously made by the United States.” 

Little wonder then that advocates of placing a woman’s face on one of our currency bills favor removing Andrew Jackson’s visage from the $20 bill and not Alexander Hamilton’s from the $10 bill. It also doesn’t hurt their argument that Hamilton was the architect of our national financial system while Jackson fought against the national bank.

Speaking of nefarious characters within and without, the U.S. and the world is obsessed with ISIS, and who can blame them given the Islamic terrorist organization’s beastly activities in the name of religion, at least as its adherents see it. The barbaric actions of ISIS and other jihadists come roughly 1,400 years after Muhammad founded Islam. 

For the sake of comparison, let’s see what was happening some 1,400 years after Jesus? Oh yes, the Spanish Inquisition, which followed on the heels of various Crusades which attacked Moslems, Cathars and Jews in the Holy Land and Europe. Looks like 1,400 years is not a happy time for those who don’t scrupulously adhere to organized religions. 

(By the way, if we assume the formal Jewish religion started around the time of Moses, estimated to be around 1200 BCE, 1,400 years later would be just after the Jews twice lost rebellions against Roman rule in Judea.)

Sex and the City (Politic), Curse of the Cursive, Summer Memories

I blame the Yankees. 

You might have noticed I'm blogging less often these days. It's not for lack of something to say, but rather because I'm spending hours watching NY Yankees baseball games. I had every intention of blogging Sunday afternoon but wound up hooked on the Yankees-Orioles game. After Mariano Rivera blew his second save of the season by giving up a two-run homer to Adam Jones in the top of the ninth, I was too depressed to write. 

That explains Sunday. What about the rest of the week? Well, most Yankees games are in the evening, so I while away (some would say, waste away) my time staring at the TV screen. I better finish this blog and post it before the first pitch this evening. ...

Sex and the City: Now that Eliot Spitzer has declared his candidacy for comptroller of New York City on the heels (stiletto heels?) of Anthony Weiner’s bid to become mayor, it is not too presumptuous to say the Big Apple has a taste for scandal-plagued politicians. I don’t mean that disrespectfully. I never really followed Weiner’s rise (pun intended) to stardom, but I was a fan of the former governor. Two years ago when Spitzer appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher and began writing Op-Ed pieces I foresaw his return to politics. You might not agree with his zeal or holier-than-thou attitude (not really tempered since his fall from grace), but one cannot deny that his positions are progressive and that he voices noble sentiment for the masses not often heard from most politicians.  

Will Weiner’s and Spitzer’s sexual indiscretions hamper their electability? Doubtful. Even in socially conservative areas like South Carolina and Georgia voters supported Mark Sanford and Newt Gingrich despite their failure to live up to their wedding vows. And many New Yorkers still like Rudy Giuliani despite his less than faithful allegiance to his former wife. 

Bottom line—As long as their campaign platforms don’t undermine their name recognition advantage, Weiner and Spitzer are in strong positions to win their contests.

Curse of the Cursive: When I went off to journalism graduate school at Syracuse University back in the late summer of 1971, I took along for hanging on my apartment wall a copy of the Declaration of Independence reprinted on the full back page of the first section of the July 4th edition of The New York Times. (Time out for a short history lesson: for those who might not be aware of it, the Declaration was not in fact signed on July 4, 1776. Independence was voted on and declared on July 2. The text of the Declaration was adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4. Most of the signatures were affixed on August 2. And that famous picture of the delegates signing the document, which hangs in the rotunda of the Capitol—never happened. A figment of the artist’s imagination.)

Back to the point at hand. It was, admittedly, not easy reading the text of the Declaration. Written in script common to the colonial era—a large lower case “f” where an “s” would normally be, and other oddities of the day—the document is dense reading, in its appearance and content. When I left Syracuse the following June with my diploma I didn’t take the Declaration with me. No matter. Each July 4 The Times would reprint a copy. Sometimes at Independence Day barbecues my friends and I would read the text out loud, haltingly, to be sure, as we struggled to decipher the cursive writing. 

I’m not sure if this was the first year The Times did it, but it was the first time I noticed the newspaper no longer reprints the Declaration in its original form across the full back page of the first section. Instead, the reproduction is an inset while the text is printed in regular type. Sure, it’s easier to read, but is The Times sending a subtle message that our population’s script-reading skills have deteriorated to the point where a majority of us cannot read cursive writing? For a look at some of the debate on the value of cursive writing, check out these articles and opinion pieces: http://query.nytimes.com/search/sitesearch/#/cursive+handwriting/365days/

Summer Memories: While we’re on the subject of the Fourth of July, I was reminded that for 15 years I attended summer camp but cannot recall with any clarity any celebration of our nation’s birthday. True, these were Jewish, Zionist, sleepaway camps in the 1950s and 1960s, but we did raise the American flag every day and pledged allegiance. 

What I do vividly recall is another commemoration, more somber. Tisha B’Av. The ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av, the day attributed to many calamities that befell the Jewish people through the ages, including the destruction of the First and Second Temples in, respectively, 586 BCE and 70 CE. 

Tisha B’Av is a fast day, and since Jewish days begin at sunset, we’d eat dinner early. After the meal the staff would rearrange the dining hall, turning benches over on their sides. Lights were shut off. On top of every bench, four to a bench, candles inside scooped out potatoes, were placed, to provide light by which we sang the Book of Lamentations. You can imagine the first impression this austere ceremony had on a boy of seven, and my subsequent years at camp. The fireworks of the Fourth of July did not hold a candle to the evocative sorrow of Tisha B’Av. Tisha B’Av will begin next Monday night. 

Musings on Home, Intelligence and Blame

Home Sweet Home: The man responsible for building our home died Monday at age 81. He didn’t actually hammer the nails into the frame, or do any other type of manual labor. But Martin Berger, along with his partner Robert Weinberg, created our residential neighborhood as a prelude to transforming much of Westchester County and specifically White Plains into a thriving commercial district through projects developed by the Robert Martin Co.

Our little subdivision, known officially as Carriage Hill, was built in 1966. The three streets created within the development bare the names of Berger’s business and family relationships: Romar Avenue after Robert Martin; Teramar Way after his then wife Terry and Martin; our street, Brad Lane, named after his son, Brad.

Back in 1990, while attending a UJA meeting for an upcoming family trip to Israel, I sat in a room with perhaps 40 others. As we went around the room introducing ourselves, the maybe 30-something young man with long, curly, prematurely grey hair sitting next to me said his name was Brad Berger. I couldn’t resist telling him I lived on his street.

According to his father’s obituary, Brad now lives in Beverly Hills, Calif.


Proof Positive: I’m normally a cynic when it comes to the intelligence of the electorate. Here’s a clip from Jay Leno’s Tuesday show that provides more than ample proof I have much to be worried about: http://www.nbc.com/the-tonight-show/video/citizenship-test-9-13-11/1355026

(In case you have difficulty opening this link, Jay questioned young adults, all citizens, about their knowledge of American history, questions he culled from the test administered to immigrants seeking U.S. citizenship. Here are some of the answers provided by three people interviewed by Leno:

Who fought in the Civil War? The U.S. and Britain
Who was president during the Civil War? George Washington
Who assassinated President Lincoln? Lee Harvey Oswald
When was the Declaration of Independence written? 1935
How many Supreme Court justices are there? Two
How many U.S. senators are there? One
How many U.S. senators are there? 52, because there are 52 states
Who is the current chief executive of the country? Greenspan
Name a country that borders the United States? Europe)

How could these people allow themselves to be shown on television exhibiting such utter stupidity? I guess getting 15 seconds of fame was worth more than keeping their veil of dignity and intelligence.

Leno had a response I found acceptable. He ended each person’s interview by suggesting they enter a nearby van so they could be transported across the border where they could learn more about America before being permitted to re-enter.


The Next Phase: We’re moving into the next phase of the election process—the blame game for who’s responsible for the lousy economy. For all you old timers, it’s like the “who lost China” debate of the early 1950s, and the “who lost Vietnam” debate of the 1960s and 1970s.

I think I can safely say both political parties share the blame for the economic distress we find ourselves wallowing in. From Clinton through Obama and their respective congressional partners, the leadership of our country has enabled corporate America and wealthy Americans to escape taxes, or at least their fair share, while ignoring the deterioration of the middle and working classes’ buying power. They’ve allowed more people to slip into poverty. You know the rest, the soaring national debt, etc., so I won’t detail it.

Democrats and Republicans clearly are not able to work together. So here are two tongue-in-cheek solutions to consider:

First, let’s give Republicans a chance to implement their program, on the condition that if GOP ideas to get people back to work don’t produce substantial results by September 2012, say, an unemployment rate of 8% or lower, they will agree to adopt the Democratic plan. If the GOP plan works, no doubt they’d be swept into office in November 2012. But if it doesn’t work they have to accept the Democratic plan for one year regardless of how the election turns out.

My second suggestion is to stop federal spending in states where governors and legislators complain about excessive federal spending. So, in a state like Texas, Gov. Perry could not request any federal disaster relief for the wild fires that are consuming his state. Nor could he ask for FEMA funds if a tornado or hurricane struck. And Perry’s constituents would stop receiving monthly Social Security checks since it’s just a Ponzi scheme, anyway.

Residents of states opting out of federal funding would have to decide if they want to continue to live in those states. That will force them to decide if the federal government really is the bane of their lives, or if they care more for the opportunity to carry a concealed weapon, or if they want their children to learn about Creationism, or some other value that overrides being part of the national budget.