Month: October 2016

Categories
Politics

They’re NOT the Same!

You know how you feel when someone is being a real jerk to you, and you engage calmly and reasonably in a conversation with that person? Then a third person comes along and says, “Okay, you two, break it up. You’re both out of line here,” or something to that effect? And you want to protest, “NO, not you TWO! That ONE! I didn’t do anything out of line. Sometimes I might be a jerk, but today was not my day!” I’m an honest enough person to admit that sometimes I am the jerk, and I deserve to be called out; but when I get called out simply for engaging with someone who’s being unreasonable, it’s frustrating because the accusation creates a false equivalence between the jerk and me, which in that particular instance is unjustified.

That’s how I felt yesterday when I read this article on the CNN website: “The Hubris of the 2016 Candidates,” by Stephen Collinson. Attempts to draw a false equivalence between two candidates who couldn’t possibly be any further from equal has confused voters and made a farce of media coverage in this campaign. One of the candidates Mr. Collinson speaks of is clearly guilty of epic hubris, but the other is not. Hillary Clinton’s fatal flaws, which are not actually flaws, are in my opinion her natural introversion, her intellect, and her gender.

In Greek and Shakespearean tragedy, the protagonist—typically a man of high rank and power—is subjected to an external situation through which he is ultimately brought to ruin. The external situation is, however, only the catalyst, not the cause of his downfall; the real cause of his destruction is an internal weakness often referred to as the fatal flaw. Powerful as the external forces are, if the internal weakness were not present, the tragic hero could withstand the onslaught and prevail in the end.

The Greeks had a word for the flaw which is often present in those of high rank and power: hubris. Hubris is defined as overweening pride, arrogance, defiance toward the gods. It suggests a failure to recognize one’s humanity, a tendency to see oneself as existing above the natural laws that govern other mortals, a sense of immortality and immunity to fate and forces of nature. Hubris is often considered the fatal flaw of tragic heroes such as Oedipus.

Donald Trump is full of hubris! I agree with Stephen Collinson on that point. Trump is arrogant, he sees himself incapable of losing (despite his many losses and failures in the past) unless he’s cheated, and he sees himself as entitled to possess anything to which he lays claim. The normal rules of elections and the will of the majority do not apply to him. Last week, he made the statement that we should just cancel the election and “give it to Trump.” Of course, he can claim that he was only joking, but we know better; and besides, what other candidate has ever made that “joke”? He has refused to say that he will concede if he loses. Sophocles couldn’t have imagined greater hubris that Donald Trump has displayed!

Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, has in no way demonstrated hubris. She was president and valedictorian of her graduating class at Wellesley and graduated with honors from Yale Law School. With credentials like that, she could have applied to prestigious law firms, made lots of money, and retired at the top of her field. That would have been hubris. Instead, she chose to go to work for the Children’s Defense Fund and has devoted her career to helping exploited women, children, and families secure the same level of education, health care, and security afforded to those with more resources. I fail to see arrogance or placing oneself above the rank and file of humanity in those choices.

Nor do I find overweening pride in the inner compass which has guided her life. Her faith, her devotion to the cause of helping others, her compassion for those most in need, her inspiration by great leaders—none of these say hubris to me. The Methodist mantra which she frequently quotes, “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can,” speaks of humility, not arrogance. Her inspiration as a young woman came from her youth pastor, Martin Luther King Jr., and others who advocated equality and justice for all.

Daniel Burke, in his article “The Public and Private Faith of Hillary Clinton,” also dispels the notion that Mrs. Clinton is flawed by hubris.

Over her three decades in politics, Clinton has been quite willing to talk about how her work has been inspired by her Methodist faith. She traces some of her political positions, particularly concerning children and the poor, directly to Christ’s commandment to care for “the least of these.”

Speaking to an assembly of Methodist women in 2014, Clinton cited the Gospel story of Jesus multiplying the loaves and fishes to feed a hungry crowd.

“He was teaching about the responsibility we all share, to step up and serve the community, especially to help those with the greatest need and the fewest resources,” Clinton said.

Nevertheless, her critics cling to the unfounded claims that Mrs. Clinton is evil personified and deserving of jail rather than election to the presidency. The personality traits which Mrs. Clinton’s critics see as proof that she is dark and sinister—what Collinson calls “her obsession with privacy” and her “tendency for opaqueness”—might also be seen as classic characteristics of an introvert. She has admitted that she is not the natural politician or public speaker that her husband is. Trump accuses her of staying too secluded because she’s sleeping while he’s out bloviating and rabble rousing.

The two Clintons seem to be at opposite ends of the introversion-extroversion scale. Bill is the extrovert who gains energy from being with people, talking to them, hugging them, just hanging out with them. An introvert, like Hillary, doesn’t dislike people; but she needs privacy and seclusion. An introvert recharges her batteries by being alone, starts to shut down after being active for too long, often chooses an extrovert as a romantic partner, has an eye for detail, has an ability to see the big picture, and needs to balance solitude with social activity. (For more, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/20/introverts-signs-am-i-introverted_n_3721431.html)

Do those characteristics sound like anyone we know? Being an introvert myself, I can strongly relate. We do like people, and we enjoy being social, but we need to socialize on our own terms rather than being forced or dictated to; and after socializing for a while, we need to retreat. Hillary Clinton works the rope lines and poses for selfies with admirers, but that’s not where she gets her high. Doing those things seems to require much more of a conscious effort for her than for her husband. And speaking of her husband, she was forced to cope with the biggest personal crises of her life while in the public spotlight with the cameras rolling. As each scandal broke, instead of locking herself into her bedroom and crying her heart out, as many of us would have done and as she would probably have preferred to do, she had to hold her head high and face the world every day.

Therefore, the whole idea of saying both current presidential candidates “are like two Shakespearean protagonists falling prey to hubris” (Stephen Collinson) is absurd! And the oft-repeated mantras that she (or he) is the lesser of two evils or that they are two equally flawed candidates are equally absurd. These are all examples of the false equivalency which has made rational discussion of this farcical campaign all but impossible.

Carlos Maza, in his video “Trump, Clinton, and the Problem of False Equivalence,” uses the analogy of a horse race. He says the media are accustomed to reporting a presidential campaign as a horse race in which two normal horses are running neck and neck, some voters pulling for one horse to win and some pulling for the other. Regardless of which horse wins, we still have a relatively normal, qualified person in the Oval Office when it’s all over. Not so in 2016, however! This year, according to Maza’s analogy, we have one “pretty normal horse” running against a wild bull. This wild bull is charging about the track, attacking other candidates, attacking audience members, and generally creating havoc.

Because of this unique situation, members of the media find themselves in a dilemma. Do they report this as a normal horse race despite the fact that one of the horses is really a wild bull who has no business being in the race? Or do they say, “Holy shit! There’s a wild bull on the tracks! Run for your lives, everybody”? The second response would be the honest one; however, if they were to respond in that honest manner, they could be accused of bias, and they have enough of those accusations already. Some publications, such as the Huffington Post, have chosen to sound the alarm and issue clear warning of the danger of treating a wild bull as a serious contestant in a horse race. Others have focused on analyzing why this odd horse is doing the weird things he does, without ever admitting that he’s not a horse.

Possibly never in the history of presidential politics have we seen two candidates with as little equivalence as exists between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, so everyone needs to stop already with the “two equally flawed candidates” hogwash. There is nothing equal about these two people. One is the most knowledgeable, prepared candidate who has ever sought the office of president. The other is the least knowledgeable or prepared. One has been rated the most honest politician ever fact checked by Politico; the other has been found to lie to some degree in 71% of the statements they have checked.

One is arrogant, full of hubris, and sees himself as entitled to win whatever he sets his sights on. He is narcissistic in the extreme and thrives on the adulation of chanting crowds whose personal needs mean nothing to him. His life and career have been all self-service, not public service, and his presidency would be no exception to that rule. The other is so driven by her spiritual desire to serve others that she is willing to overcome her natural tendencies toward privacy and seclusion and put herself into the public spotlight if doing so allows her to accomplish her goal of doing all the good she can in all the ways she can. I’m with that one. I’m with her!

Categories
Politics

Open the Eyes of Our Hearts

Langston Hughes–American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist–posed these questions in his 1951 poem “Dream Deferred”:

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

My question is what happens to a prejudice when it’s no longer legal to exercise it openly. Does it go away? Do old attitudes change immediately? Can a law require people to respect each other? Do laws have anything to do with bigotry, or is prejudice a dark part of the human condition, lying dormant in each of us? Can laws erase prejudice or only forbid its open expression? A popular expression in the 1960s was “You can’t legislate morality.” The longer I’ve lived the more I understand and agree with that statement. Laws don’t make people good. Good people make good laws and govern themselves by high standards which can’t be externally imposed.

Racial injustice is written into the earliest pages of American history, including the genocide of Native Americans and a two-and-a-half-century slave trade. The first African slave ship arrived in the Jamestown colony of America in 1619, bringing extra hands to labor in the tobacco fields and other fields that produced lucrative crops for the enterprising colonists. Let that sink in for a moment. The slaves were here one year before the Pilgrims and eleven years before the Puritans, the two groups who established the New England states.

From 1619 until 1862 when the Emancipation Proclamation was published and 1865 when the ratification of the 13th Amendment made emancipation the law of the land, the kidnapped Africans were property of white planters who amassed fortunes on the backs of their laborers. Dark-skinned people in America were not citizens and had none of the rights of citizenship or residence, including the right to be educated or to be accorded the personal respect and dignity due every human being. They were just property at the disposal of powerful whites.

From 1865 to 1965, the “free” black citizens lived under Jim Crow laws: ordinances enacted by local and state governments in the South to ensure that people of color continued to be denied the full rights of their citizenship. These laws established a system of segregation that was strictly enforced for a whole century after the Civil War ended and the 13th Amendment was passed. People of color lived in fear for their lives and safety if they strayed the least bit from their adherence to these oppressive laws.

Schools and churches were segregated, blacks could not use the same restrooms or water fountains as whites, blacks were required to sit in the rear seats on public transportation, they were denied entrance to restaurants and public libraries, and they were subjected to numerous other indignities unimaginable to most of us in 2016.

In addition to government-sanctioned segregation, oppression, and violence, other organizations took it upon themselves to help keep “freed” blacks living in fear and subjection, most prominent among them the Ku Klux Klan. A group of Confederate veterans from Pulaski, Tennessee, wasted no time making sure there would be a force in place to prevent the “freed” blacks from exercising the rights of their newly conferred citizenship; they formed the original Ku Klux Klan in 1866, less than a year after the Civil War had ended. According to History.com,

The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) extended into almost every southern state by 1870 and became a vehicle for white southern resistance to the Republican Party’s Reconstruction-era policies aimed at establishing political and economic equality for blacks. Its members waged an underground campaign of intimidation and violence directed at white and black Republican leaders. Though Congress passed legislation designed to curb Klan terrorism, the organization saw its primary goal–the reestablishment of white supremacy–fulfilled through Democratic victories in state legislatures across the South in the 1870s.

 It’s interesting to note that the Republican Party, Party of Lincoln, was the one at that time fighting for equal rights, whereas now they’re the ones who’ve lost their minds and are supporting the oppression of everyone they deem threatening—which is pretty much everyone except white heterosexuals, with bonus points for being male.

But back to the KKK, they’ve gone through periods of decline, popping up again whenever their white supremacist ideals seem threatened. Over the course of the century and a half the Klan has existed, they’ve added immigrants, Catholics, Jews, and organized labor to their hit list. As everyone is well aware, these are not peaceful protesters; their vitriolic, violent attacks have ranged from protests and intimidation to bombings and lynchings.

Echoing Langston Hughes’s question, my question is what happened to all of that hatred and prejudice when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, national origin, and sex. Did everyone start treating blacks, immigrants, Muslims, and women with respect? We all know the answer to that one. Did the KKK disband? Unfortunately not; we’ve been hearing frequently that they are still very much alive and active. Did white supremacists become nice, kind people tolerant of all races? That didn’t happen either.

It seems what happened is that prejudice went underground. It became socially unacceptable to express open hostility toward those whom we label as “other.” Many of us began trying to look at the world through the eyes of the oppressed and to learn different ways of treating our fellow humans. Many others, however, gave only grudging lip service to acceptance and equality while continuing to harbor prejudice in their hearts and minds; and among those of like mind, they even felt the freedom to express their prejudice out loud.

The term “dog whistle” has become a familiar phrase: an expression of hatred and intolerance inaudible to some but clearly heard by others, coded to bypass the censorship and judgment of the more enlightened, the ones trying to rise above those base instincts. The so-called “birther movement” has been labeled a dog-whistle strategy aimed at setting apart our first black president as “other,” as not one of us.

As a nation, we have congratulated ourselves on our progress in race relations since we have been legally bound to equal rights for all. We tell ourselves that we used to be a culture which discriminated against races other than whites, but we’ve gotten over that; we’ve conquered our baser instincts and become a better people. All of that discrimination was in our past, or at least that’s what we desperately want to believe. The view of the white majority eager to absolve ourselves from the guilt of our past sins, however, is not shared by people of color whose life experiences tell a very different story.

A few years ago, a dear friend and colleague of African descent told me that when he drives from Florida to his home state of North Carolina, he knows where it’s not safe for him to stop. He told me that in the 21st century, less than sixteen years ago. Another African-American friend who is married to a white man is still nervous about holding her husband’s hand in public. According to CNN, a high school in Georgia held its first integrated prom in 2014, and another school in Mississippi waited until 2009 to integrate this annual school event.

Those of us who were trying to learn how to be better human beings began paying attention to language, to the ways we talk about each other. We made the N word socially unacceptable; we decided people should have the right to decide for themselves what they prefer to be called. We learned that words matter because words inform attitudes. It’s easy to mistreat someone you’ve dehumanized by referring to them as a N—-, not as easy when you’ve accorded them the dignity of a respectful title which acknowledges their humanity and equality.

When the people in your closest social circle are accepting and respectful of all people groups, it’s easy to assume everyone thinks and acts like you and yours. It’s shocking to hear rants coming out of a fellow citizen that sound like throwbacks to a century or more in the past. Those who live in the dark recesses of a culture that has tried to move on, to evolve, feel increasingly left out, disrespected, made to feel small because they harbor attitudes which they can’t freely express for fear of being ostracized or legally penalized. While some of us consider changes in our language and attitudes a matter of courtesy and respect for others, those in that angry subculture scorn and chafe under the constraint of what they call “political correctness.”

This evolution toward tolerance and equality requires a constant learning process even for the most devout. When we first hear “black lives matter,” some may not immediately understand why it’s necessary to remind anyone of what seems to be a given. But those who want to be better human beings and to live in a culture of equality, tolerance, respect, and kindness take the time to listen and learn and to hear the narratives as told by those who need to be assured that their lives matter. While we’re listening and learning, however, others are becoming more angry and resentful over being required to publicly conform to politically correct attitudes which they have not internalized.

Then along comes a demagogue who says, “I get it. I’m one of you. That political correctness stuff is just BS. Elect me your leader, and we’ll take America back to a period of greatness when we white men were supreme and everyone else bowed to us. We’ll deport a bunch of people, we’ll deny entrance to a bunch of people, and we’ll make America white again. By allying ourselves with the alt-right and securing endorsement and support from the KKK, the NRA, and the other darkest parts of the subculture, we’ll reinvent racism and make bigotry great again.”

There is clearly a civil war going on, which we can only hope will never see a battlefield, but which is just as divisive and polarizing as the Civil War of 150 years ago. One side aims to protect its turf by guarding its right to own as many weapons as possible and hoping to elect a leader who legitimizes their bigotry. What is the weapon of the other side, of those who want justice and equality for all, who want to keep what IS great in America and fix the things we still need to work on, without losing what we’ve already gained?

Mahatma Gandhi is often credited for saying “Be the change you want to see in the world.” That’s not what he actually said, but it’s still a good principle to live by. Here’s what he really said, which I think is even better:

We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of the body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world could also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.

 There’s the weapon: Change yourself; change your nature. There’s a little bit of prejudice in all of us, and change doesn’t come easily or quickly, but we can all do it.

Jesus told us to love God and love other people. When we love God, we’re seeing the world as something bigger than ourselves. Those who don’t acknowledge God still need to see the world as bigger than themselves and equally inclusive of everyone in it. We all need to remove ourselves from the center of the universe and make our organizing principle our love of God or love of the universe or love of the planet that gave birth to us and nurtures us.

Then we need to learn to look at everyone who shares this vast space with us as equal recipients of God’s love or equally deserving of the benefits of the earth that created us all. You can’t truly love God and hate God’s creation; you can’t truly love Mother Earth and hate any of her children.

When a football player refuses to stand for the national anthem, instead of instantly condemning him as undeserving of citizenship in our country and deserving of being fired from his job for being such a poor role model, we should ask ourselves why he made that choice. We should listen to his story and attempt to see the world through his eyes, not force him to see it through our eyes. What are we afraid of? Are we afraid we may have to admit he has a point? Might considering the problems he calls to our attention force us to look into a mirror and see things we don’t want to face? Might that require us to step out of our comfortable complacency and DO something?

Prejudice is here. It never went away. We’re once again looking into its vile, ugly face. We can’t make it go away by electing a demagogue or by pretending everything’s okay or by blaming the victims. Change starts with looking inward and allowing the light of love to shine through us. That sounds a little corny and trite, but it’s the only way.

 

 

Categories
Politics

Sex and Politics

The only thing more shocking than Donald Trump’s lewd dialogue with Billy Bush in the now-infamous hot-mic tape is the number of people who have defended him and shrugged off his comments as “boy talk.” At the same time, many of us have struggled to understand how anyone—especially a woman—could be undisturbed by such vile attitudes and the implied admission of sexual assault against multiple women.

Michelle Obama’s emotional statement that these revelations have shaken her to her core are juxtaposed against memes showing Julie Andrews joyfully dancing atop the mountain with the caption “This is me not caring what Donald Trump said about women.” Dozens, if not thousands, of women have taken to social media to write impassioned defenses of Trump and to state their continued enthusiastic endorsement of him and their intention to vote for him to serve as president of our country.

Baffled by such unreasonable and unthinkable responses, I’ve struggled to get inside the thinking of women who can support a blatant misogynist and evangelical Christians who can support a person who so flagrantly violates their own stated beliefs.

To be able to have a discussion with anyone, I have to understand the other person’s argument: not just the conclusion but the claim, evidence, and reasoning which led to the conclusion. A couple of weeks ago, I was in a group discussing the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine. With such clear evidence that the Israelis are responsible for gross human rights violations against the Palestinians, the question I needed to have answered is “What is the argument for many people’s one-sided support of Israel?” By what thought process do so many people justify Israel’s actions and place all of the responsibility for wrongdoing on the Palestinians?

When my daughter told me that my son-in-law adamantly opposed her plan to buy all white towels for their new home, I asked “What is his argument?” What is the thought process which leads to the conclusion that having all white towels is bad? What did white towels ever do to him?

Likewise, I have tried to understand the reasoning which could lead a woman or an extreme right-wing Christian to want to elect a president who has so outspokenly violated everything they hold dear. I don’t know, but here’s one conclusion I’ve drawn: If you were delusional enough to think Donald Trump was fit to serve as President of the United States of America before the hot-mic tape was released, nothing in that tape would change your mind. That tape was not the wake-up call; it was the confirmation of a thousand wake-up calls we’d received long before the tape was released. Those who were still not awake simply can’t be wakened.

Americans have accepted sexual improprieties in our presidents throughout our history as a nation: Thomas Jefferson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John Kennedy, and Bill Clinton, to name the most familiar. Presidents, presidential hopefuls, and scores of others in high office have been brought down by sex scandals; and many of them have survived the ordeals, their reputations tarnished but their heroic status intact. Here’s a link to a list of 25 of our most admired and influential leaders who have embroiled themselves in scandalous behavior: http://www.gq.com/gallery/the-twenty-five-greatest-philanderers-in-american-political-history#26. I make the distinction between scandal and scandal-worthy behavior because before the advent of the 24/7 news cycle, many of these facts were not widely known; if those people lived today, however, their every move would be followed and reported.

Groping, skirt-chasing, lusting—none of these are new to us in the lives of our national leaders. Thomas Jefferson, in addition to his well-documented long-term relationship with his half-black slave Sally Hemings, is rumored to have had affairs with at least two other women. When Bill Clinton was impeached, it was his lying, not his philandering, that most people were unable to accept and for which they believed he should be prosecuted. In case anyone is wondering when we might have our first gay president, some believe we already have, in the person of James Buchanan.

And if consent is the thing that separates the acceptable from the unthinkable, I don’t believe Jefferson’s relationship with Hemings can be strictly defined as consensual, given the vast distance between them in terms of power and status. It seems most of Bill Clinton’s dalliances were classified as consensual, although he has also been accused of using his power and position to take advantage of women.

Other rumors from this source, http://www.salon.com/2015/02/08/the_7_biggest_presidential_sex_scandals_in_history_partner/, would have us believe that Andrew Jackson may have been married to a bigamist, since he married her before she was divorced from her previous husband; Republican saint Ronald Reagan was accused of rape in 1952 and the devoted Nancy allegedly had a fling with Frank Sinatra; Bush 41 and 43 have both been accused of extra-marital affairs, and 43 was accused of rape by a woman who later died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Regardless of how much is true and how much is rumor, sex scandals are nothing new to us; and some of them have barely diminished our admiration for the perpetrators. I think it helps that we didn’t find out about Jefferson until a couple of centuries after his death, and we didn’t even know about Kennedy when he was in office. People’s private lives, even when they held high office or aspired to hold high office, were considered private. They did their jobs and established their reputations without the distraction of having their most private moments blasted out on TV and Internet every minute of every day. By the time we knew, we had learned to love and value them for their service and could forgive, though not condone, their private sins.

Those whose scandals have been made public during the age of the blow-by-blow news cycle have often, however, had their political careers dashed by their private sins; remember Gary Hart and John Edwards. And even those whose sex lives have remained either private or unremarkable have other unthinkable acts on their records, such as FDR’s executive order authorizing the internment of tens of thousands of Japanese descent, including both American citizens and non-citizens (in addition to his sexual dalliances). Abraham Lincoln, freer of the slaves, did not hold 21st-century ideals regarding equality between blacks and whites or the possibility of our living together in harmony.

As Americans, we are obviously not accustomed to being governed by saints. How then do we defend our outrage and revulsion over the contents of Donald Trump’s hot-mic tape? I would argue that the tape is less remarkable for what it reveals about him than for its confirmation of what we already knew. This is concrete evidence which, for those of us who already found him abominable, confirmed and strengthened our conclusions. On the other hand, those who saw him as the American messiah were understandably not swayed in that opinion because they’ve seen it all before. Please don’t misunderstand: I am as appalled as ever by what we heard on that tape, but I’ve come to understand why others are not. The fact is it’s not those appalling statements that make Trump unfit for the presidency; those statements simply confirm why we already knew he was unfit.

These are the things we already knew about Donald Trump before October 9, 2016, which make him unfit to serve as our president, even IF he were a model of marital fidelity.

Donald Trump is unfit to serve as president because he knows nothing about our Constitution or how our government works. Thomas Jefferson was a scholar who wrote our Declaration of Independence, one of the most brilliantly composed documents ever published. Although he was out of the country serving as Minister to France during the time the Constitution was being drafted, his other writings fill volumes, and excerpts from them line the walls of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. Bill Clinton is best known for 115 consecutive months of economic expansion, the longest such period in American history, along with major contributions to providing jobs, advancing education, and lowering unemployment.

Jefferson and Clinton were not models of purity or piety, but our country is indebted to them for their brilliant minds and lasting imprint on our government and culture. Trump, on the other hand, is a demagogue whose only claim to excellence is that he will fix everything he perceives to be wrong with our country—even though 16 months into his campaign, he has yet to tell us how he would keep any of those promises. He is the most ignorant person ever to seek the presidency; and even IF his accusers’ claims were to be proven false, which I’m sure they will NOT be, he would still be unfit.

Donald Trump is unfit to serve as president because he has no respect for most of the people he would be “serving.” He has insulted and alienated women, veterans and their families, blacks, Latinos, immigrants, and almost every other major group except angry white men. His so-called campaign rallies consist of attacks on the latest person who has gotten under his very thin skin. His persistent attacks on the Khan family should have eliminated him from the race long before the mic-on-the-bus tape was released. Bill Clinton showed more class during his impeachment than Trump has shown toward Alec Baldwin for his unflattering portrayal on SNL.

Donald Trump is unfit to serve as president because he is the most immature person ever to appear on a presidential campaign platform. From the constant ax grinding to his habit of turning everything his opponent says about him back onto her, he’s the equivalent of an emotional toddler and a functional fifth grader. When Hillary Clinton says he’s not presidential, he says she’s not presidential; when she calls him temperamentally unfit, he says she has a “terrible temperament.” This is reminiscent of the Pee Wee Herman line, “I know you are, but what am I?” Cute for a comedian, unbelievably childish for a presidential candidate.

And just this week his former ghost writer, Tony Schwartz, estimated Trump’s vocabulary at about 200 words. For perspective, child development experts say that a 2 1/2-year-old should know approximately 300 words. No wonder he can’t express complex ideas and when he’s reading prepared comments, he sounds as if he’s seeing them for the first time.

Contrast Trump’s juvenile rants with the eloquent speeches of FDR, which my stepfather still plays on his computer because they bring back memories of a revered president and wartime leader. Contrast Trump’s toddler tantrums to the lofty rhetoric of John Kennedy and Bill Clinton; all three of them are known for their sex scandals, but two of them are also known as brilliant leaders with a vast knowledge of and love for our constitution and our country.

Trump is unfit to serve as president because of the people he associates with or with whom he hints at associations. When his campaign was about to implode, he replaced his campaign manager with Steve Bannon, a person best known for his white supremacist attitudes and for creating an online haven for a diverse group now known as the alt-right. Trump has also been often accused of a bromance with Vladimir Putin, known for human rights abuses in Russia. As further demonstration of his childish thinking, he has defended his support of Putin with the line, “He says nice things about me, so I’ll say nice things about him.”

Oh, and have I mentioned that Trump is unfit to serve as president because of his utter lack of knowledge about other countries’ governments and our relationships abroad? From his fascination with nuclear weapons to his casual mention of destroying international alliances, he is a threat to our safety and security as a nation. Franklin Delano Roosevelt led our country through all but four months of World War II; under his leadership, we rebounded from the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor and had nearly achieved victory by the time of his sudden death. His masterful leadership during the most globally threatening event in history overshadows our knowledge of his private transgressions. Donald Trump, with his ignorance and immaturity, would more likely be the cause of than the solution to international conflicts.

Donald Trump is unfit to serve as president because he has a proven record of lying. Not only do his lies confirm that he cannot be trusted, they also insult our intelligence. He denies saying and doing things which are recorded on tapes readily available to thousands of media personnel and can be replayed by the push of a button. According to Politifact, 70% of all the statements they have checked are mostly false (19%), false (34%), or pants on fire (17%). And in true Trump fashion, he has turned this truth about himself onto his opponent, who, according to Politifact, lies less than any other politician they’ve fact checked.

His lies have contributed to his incitement of fear among his followers, fear that causes them to believe his messianic claims and remain loyal to him no matter how disgusting he becomes. FDR, in his first inaugural address, famously said this about fear: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Every time Bill Clinton speaks, he eloquently reminds us what a great country we live in, not a country which is on the brink of disaster and can be made great again only by electing an ignorant demagogue.

When it comes to sex in politics, Americans are not virgins. Even claims of rape and predatory behavior are not new. What this election has brought us for the first time is an ignorant, bigoted, misogynistic xenophobe who is a threat to our existence as a republic. Sex won’t destroy us, and rape can be litigated in our courts. Ignorance and bigotry are the real threats, and we simply can’t stand by in silence as our fellow Americans vote to send an ignorant, bigoted demagogue to the sanctuary of the Oval Office. We can’t let that happen.

 

 

 

Categories
Politics

The Christian Right Is Neither

When it’s difficult to see daylight between the alt-right and the Christian right, we’ve wandered into dangerously wrong territory. Today’s Republican Party has made strange bedfellows of some seemingly divergent groups: KKK sympathizers, alt-right thugs, the gun lobby, and others; and in the middle of them all is the “Christian” right, evangelicals whose voices are in unison with philosophies that undermine and threaten to destroy our republic and the values which we have always held inviolable. On the surface, it’s impossible to see what could unite groups that should be at opposite poles.

This strange new coalition which has formed under the umbrella of the Republican Party is not Christian, not conservative, and not Republican. The Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and even Ronald Reagan is so far from the party of 2016 that the two shouldn’t be called by the same name.

Republicans have proudly called themselves the Christian party and the family-values party, yet in 2016 they have nominated and are supporting and defending a candidate who has lived his life by the opposite of any definition of Christianity I know. And his campaign CEO, Steve Bannon, has ties to the darkest elements from the underbelly of American civilization. At Breitbart news, he, according to Sarah Posner of Mother Jones, “created an online haven for white nationalists.”

The new Republican Coalition is not conservative. Louis Guenin, in one of my all-time favorite articles called “Why Voters Should Turn from the Pseudoconservative Party of the Great Recession” (Huffington Post, 24 Dec 2012), offers this definition of conservatism:

Conservatism, as eloquently introduced by Edmund Burke (1729–1797), advocates esteem for government and established institutions. It holds that within them lies an accumulated wisdom that citizens and their leaders should respect and consult. Revering the established order, its constitution, and its history, conservatism cultivates a cautious disposition. Legislators should proceed by careful deliberation guided by the counsel of prudence. Policy should change incrementally. When government errs, all citizens should, in Burke’s words, “approach to the faults of the state as to the wounds of a father, with pious awe and trembling solicitude.”

Has anyone seen any esteem for government at the Republican presidential rallies of 2015 and 2016? I’ve seen angry mobs screaming their rejection of “the established order,” chanting for the opposing party’s candidate to be locked up, rejecting the politics that has made our country what it is. The “accumulated wisdom” which Edmund Burke says leaders “should respect and consult” is derided as “political correctness,” which they see as having too long constrained them from expressing their baser instincts toward their fellow citizens of different race, skin color, religion, gender, or sexuality.

The campaign chief said this week, “What we need to do is bitch-slap” the Republican Party, expressing his anger at the “party elites” who are not falling in line behind the rogue nominee. He went on to add, “Get those guys heeding too, and if we have to, we’ll take it over to make it a true conservative party.” His definition of “conservative” is obviously quite different from Edmund Burke’s definition.

The new Republican Coalition knows nothing of caution, prudence, or respect for traditional American values. The scorched-earth politics that allows low and dirty stunts such as bringing people from an opponent’s past to a debate to bully and intimidate her and a candidate’s declaring himself free from the shackles that have bound him to party principles and now in a position to declare war on the party doesn’t sound conservative by any definition. Other language I’ve heard this week is that Donald Trump wants to burn down the party if it won’t play his way.

The opposite of conservative is not liberal; most liberals better fit the definition of conservatism than today’s “conservatives” do. The opposite of conservative is contemptuous: contempt for the established order, for American politics, for our constitution, for their fellow citizens, for anyone who disagrees with them.

The new Republican Coalition is not conservative, and it’s not Republican. The founding father of the Republican Party, Abraham Lincoln, devoted the last four years of his life to preserving our union when a racist, white supremacist group of states were determined to destroy it. In his second inaugural address, Lincoln eloquently said:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

The coalition at work today under the banner of the Party of Lincoln seeks not to bind up wounds and create peace but to inflict wounds and perpetuate conflict.

Earlier in his address, Lincoln said, contrasting the state of the nation at the time of his second inaugural address with its state when he gave his first inaugural address: “Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.” I think we’re seeing that same tension today. None of us want discord and strife, but some would rather accept disunity than compromise to bring about peace and harmony.

We have to recognize, of course, that Donald Trump did not destroy the Party of Lincoln; they destroyed themselves, and Trump is the result, not the cause. A Donald Trump could never have secured the Republican nomination for the presidency until the climate was right for it, and in 2016, it’s perfect.

In David Brooks’s article “The Governing Cancer of Our Time” (26 Feb 2016), Brooks explains that in a “big, diverse society,” there are “essentially two ways to maintain order and to get things done”: “politics or some form of dictatorship,” “compromise or brute force.” Having said that politics involves compromise and deal-making in an effort to please as many within the diverse group of people as possible, Brooks assesses what has led to the state of Lincoln’s party today:

Over the past generation we have seen the rise of a generation of people who are against politics. These groups—best exemplified by the Tea Party but not exclusive to the Right—want to elect people who have no political experience. They want “outsiders.” They delegitimize compromise and deal-making. They’re willing to trample the customs and rules that give legitimacy to legislative decision making if it helps them gain power.

That attitude is greatly at odds with Lincoln’s goal to “achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

The Republican Party freed the slaves and granted them citizenship; the new Republican Coalition wants to trample the rights of citizens of color. The new coalition has become the home of the alt-right white supremacists and KKK sympathizers who would destroy every bit of progress we have made in racial relations.

The new Republican Coalition is not conservative, it’s not republican, and it’s not Christian. Most shocking and perplexing of all those who now profess allegiance to this wing of the Republican Party are evangelical “Christians.” According to a new PPRI/The Atlantic survey released this week, “Nearly two-thirds (65%) of white evangelical voters remain committed to supporting Trump, while only 16% say they favor Clinton.” Among other Christian groups, the survey says support is more evenly divided.

The fact that two-thirds of the most vocal Christian group rabidly stand behind a candidate whose life and values are the polar opposite of their professed beliefs simply defies logical explanation. That their voices are indistinguishable from those of white supremacists and all manner of bigots is at odds with Christ’s words on Christianity. A group of Pharisees asked Jesus, the founder of the Christian faith, “Which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Jesus’ simple response was

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. (Matthew 22: 37-40)

“On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” In other words, it’s that simple. If you get those two things right, you’ve got it. Don’t fret over the details.

Micah 6:8 is powerful in its simplicity:

He has told you, O mortal, what is good: and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

Joining forces with a coalition that demands justice for only certain citizens, that hates our government and our politics, that seeks to destroy whatever justice for all we’ve managed to achieve does not fulfill the commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves or to love justice and kindness.

Often being the nasty voices in social media discussions also fails to demonstrate a love of kindness or love of other people. Presenting themselves as God’s spokespersons to silence anyone who disagrees with their narrow stance only alienates, especially when what they’re saying is filled with scorn and hatred, and is not in the spirit of walking humbly with their God. Memes about jailing Hillary Clinton, virtual high fives every time they hear Trump talking about locking her up—how do these show justice, love, or humility? They’ve adopted what David Brooks calls “the bashing style of rhetoric that makes conversation impossible.”

Defending lewd, vulgar talk and behavior and condoning sexual assault because it didn’t happen this week shows no love for one’s fellow humans. Claiming that one candidate has been forgiven by God’s grace but that the other cannot be and deserves only punishment is not only theologically screwed up, it’s not loving or kind.

When innocent children are gunned down in their little school desks, these loving, god-fearing people shrug their shoulders and say, “Bummer! But we can’t do anything because Second Amendment.” Ya know, God, guns, glory. Sorry, parents!

I listened to an interview last night with Jerry Falwell Junior, the president of Liberty University, the largest Christian university in the world; he defended Trump, says he still plans to vote for him, and nobody’s perfect. And he cited James Dobson, another prominent evangelical guru, as agreeing with him.

Falwell pointed out that Jesus was often criticized for dining with sinners. Yes, Doctor Falwell, you are correct. Jesus dined with whoever came to him, including those scorned by the Pharisees, religious elite and chief hypocrites of the day. But there’s a BIG difference. Jesus hung out with them and broke bread with them, but he didn’t talk like them; and his life and values were clearly distinguishable from theirs. He associated with them without becoming one of them. He didn’t adopt their attitudes or defend their lifestyles. He shut down the hypocrites who were persecuting the woman at the well and sent her on her way with the words “Go and sin no more.” He wouldn’t allow her to be judged, but he encouraged her to adopt a healthier lifestyle. His voice was always distinct from the voices of the people to whom he showed love and compassion by dining with them.

The majority of evangelicals I’ve talked to are single-issue voters. The candidate who says (this week) that he opposes abortion gets their vote, regardless of what else he does or stands for. This is what the Bible they claim to follow calls “straining at a gnat while swallowing a camel.” I’m not saying abortion is a tiny issue; it’s an important issue, but it’s ONE issue. If we elect someone to a powerful office because of his or her stance on this one issue but ignore gross violations on dozens of other issues, that’s not godly. If we love justice, as Micah so eloquently suggests we should, we will seek justice for all.

How did this unlikely coalition come together? What is the unifying element? Matthew McWilliams, who conducted a national poll of 1800 registered voters, says, “I’ve found a single statistically significant variable predicts whether a voter supports Trump—and it’s not race, income or education levels: It’s authoritarianism.” Bingo! This is what the alt-right and the Christian right have in common: the inclination to follow strong leaders (Falwell Sr. and Jr., James Dobson, Joel Osteen). It’s what David Brooks calls the opposite of politics. Yes, politics is messy, Brooks says, but the only alternative is the dictatorial leader; and that alternative has never ended well for any nation. We should be careful what we wish for!

Most deeply frightening is what will happen on November 9, 2016. As Americans, we’ve always prided ourselves on a peaceful transfer of power. Does anyone see Donald J. Trump making a sad but gracious concession speech and promising to get behind President Clinton to keep our country great? He’s already threatened to jail his opponent if he wins, and his supporters are already talking about revolution if he loses.

On November 9, I hope we will all—Republicans, Democrats, and everything in between—remember the words of Abraham Lincoln:

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories
Politics

It Can’t Happen Here

The first presidential election I can remember is the one in which Dwight Eisenhower ran against Adlai Stevenson. I was in elementary school, and Eisenhower was the clear favorite in our little political world. We chanted on the playground, “We like Ike. He’s our man. We threw Stevenson in the garbage can.” Fast forward through 16 more presidential campaigns and we’re now living in that garbage can, thanks to a campaign that has dragged us so low into the political gutter that it’s hard to see how we can ever climb out.

Sunday night, October 9, the world watched in horror as an orange fascist strongman degraded a debate for the high office of President of the United States of America to a playground fight. Things that have never before happened in a U. S. presidential campaign—things we thought could never happen here—unfolded before our eyes in a nightmare scenario that has left sane voters reeling and running from the orange terror.

But not all voters. And that’s the frightening part. That there could be even one person left in this country still planning to vote for Donald Trump is beyond belief, but in fact there are millions who look at the same information you and I look at and see him as their messiah. How the hell did we, the United States of America, reach a point where sewer politics seems normal to a large contingent of our population? How is it possible for millions of Americans to be so oblivious to facts that no matter how much evidence mounds up, they stand by their man to the end?

These are some things I jotted down on my note pad as I watched Sunday night’s debate. Donald Trump said to Hillary Clinton at least twice, and I think more, “You should be ashamed of yourself.” At one point, he churlishly responded to her, “Yeah, because you have nothing to say.” He called her the devil. He asked the moderators more than once, “Why don’t you interrupt her? You interrupt me all the time. Why don’t you interrupt her?” He accused them more than once of siding with her: “Yeah, three on one. That’s real fair.”

In the 56-year history of televised presidential debates, beginning with the 1960 debate between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon, Americans have never witnessed anything close to the churlish, fifth-grade, school playground language that we heard from the candidate representing one of our two major political parties. In past debates, did candidates clash? Of course! Did they have extreme differences? Plenty of them! Did any of them ever call his opponent the devil or whine about the moderators or directly attack the moderators? No! Dignity is dead.

Donald Trump, throughout the debate, resembled an angry, defiant child who has been chastised and is determined to reassert his bully stance and subdue those who have humiliated him. His face was expressionless, his posture stiff. The body language expressed rage and hatred. These things don’t happen in the U. S. A. But most menacing of all is not the childishness and fifth-grade bullying; we’ve been watching that for over a year. What has often been referred to as “scorched-earth politics” was the thing that made this second debate particularly ominous, and Americans have never before seen anything that comes close to Trump’s gutter tactics and strongman persona.

Before the debate began, as we all know, he gathered four women who have made past allegations against former President Bill Clinton and broadcast a video of himself sitting at a table with them. He then took them into the debate hall to sit facing Hillary Clinton to unnerve, humiliate, and intimidate her. This is NOT the America any of us have ever known! Even worse, according to CNN’s Dana Bash, Trump’s plan was to seat those women with his family and have them enter with his family, meaning that Bill Clinton would have had to greet each of them face to face and shake each of their hands (or not), as he greeted and shook hands with Melania Trump and the rest of the Trump family members. Fortunately, word of this plan reached the debate co-chair in time for him to stop it from happening. Who would have believed we’d see such strongman tactics used in American politics, with the whole world watching us? That stunt is stunning.

Then there was Trump’s physical intimidation and menacing behavior on the debate platform itself. When Trump was taking his turn at speaking, Clinton sat respectfully on her chair and laid her microphone on the table. She picked it up and rose to her feet only when it was her turn to speak. She also looked at him and listened to him while he was speaking. In stark contrast, when she was speaking, he roamed the stage, spent little time looking her in the eye, at times lurked menacingly behind her, invaded her space, and clearly intended to unnerve and intimidate her. His microphone was always in his hand, making it convenient to interrupt her 15 times. Several times, he snapped his mic to his mouth while she was speaking, ready to pounce at the first opportunity. These are bullying and intimidation tactics the likes of which Americans have never before witnessed.

But we’re still not to the low point of the night: his direct threats of prosecution and implied threat of jail for her if he is elected president. Wow! Russia, Venezuela, Taiwan, Chile, Egypt, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Iran—all of these places have in their history examples of leaders killing or imprisoning their political opponents. But those things could never happen in the U. S. A. Or so we thought. However, we’re now one step closer: the threat has been made in front of an international audience. That’s enough to keep every citizen awake at night.

Respected journalist Dan Rather’s takeaway from Sunday night’s debate is “I suspect . . . that this is a man who, at a fundamental level, does not understand what it means to be an American.” To be qualified to lead this country, one must understand who we are as a people; and that requires knowledge obtained through years of study, reading, observing, and understanding. Trump has done none of these.

Intelligent people who have been listening to Donald Trump since July of 2015 have observed the lack of specifics in his “policy” speeches, such as they are. He claims he will deport 11 million people, build a wall and make Mexico pay for it, ban an entire religious group from entering our country, clean up the inner cities, make everyone obey the law, and a lot of other things; but we have heard barely a word about HOW he would make these things happen. That’s because Trump is what’s known as a strongman. Ed Kilgore, in an article entitled “Trump’s Strongman Politics” published in the Daily Intelligencer,” explains:

Trump’s whole platform is himself, a strongman in the ancient tradition of tribal chieftains whose very presence is a guarantor of safety and prosperity. Whatever the problem is, he’ll “fix it,” and that’s particularly true of challenges where “strength” is, in theory, of inherent value, such as maintaining a credible deterrent to foreign aggression, negotiating trade agreements, or in general threatening law breakers with violence. Adopting policies like other politicians actually undercuts this message, so Trump doesn’t bother with them. The convention managers last night might as well have emblazoned on the screen behind him Pontius Pilate’s words in presenting Jesus to the people of Jerusalem: Ecce homo! Behold the man!

Mr. Kilgore goes on to say that the strongman is reassuring to some, terrifying to others. This helps to explain the loyalty of Trump’s base and finally sheds a small glimmer of light on the ever-perplexing mystery of his popularity among evangelical Christians, whose stated beliefs are so starkly at odds with his rhetoric and life history. Central to Trump’s hold on his base is their authoritarianism. Matthew MacWilliams conducted a national poll of 1800 registered voters and published the results in Politico Magazine, titling his article “The One Weird Trait that Predicts Whether You’re a Trump Supporter”:

If I asked you what most defines Donald Trump supporters, what would you say? They’re white? They’re poor? They’re uneducated? You’d be wrong.

In fact, I’ve found a single statistically significant variable predicts whether a voter supports Trump—and it’s not race, income or education levels: It’s authoritarianism.

That’s right, Trump’s electoral strength—and his staying power—have been buoyed, above all, by Americans with authoritarian inclinations.

The problem with the strongman and authoritarianism is that it’s so starkly at odds with our better nature as Americans. To be sure, we have a long, dark history of human rights abuses, beginning with our robbing Native Americans of their ancestral home and continuing with kidnapping and enslavement of Africans, followed by another century of Jim Crow laws and oppression. Collectively we’re not exactly saints, but there is what we like to think of as our better nature: the part of us that promotes justice; that has fought against racism and extended equal rights to oppressed people; that hears the voices of Native Americans trying desperately to protect the remnants of their ancestral places from being raped by more corporate greed; that rushes to the aid of suffering people around the world; that says “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”; the part that has made us—with all of our sins—the shining example of democracy and human goodness.

The world is changing. Even in the country where we’ve always thought we were safe because we had abundant resources and power, and we’ve always come out on top in international conflicts, we’re now seeing other countries developing nuclear capabilities; we see leaders who don’t like us and who have not only the desire but potentially the ability to do us great harm. Our feeling of security is being threatened, and many now see the strongman as our only hope for peace and safety.

As ludicrous as the Orange Man’s promises are to many of us, many others see a system that has been increasingly rigged against them, that has ignored their ideas and needs and pandered to the richer and more powerful. The problem, and the enemy, in their minds is the government. Now someone who could possibly become the leader of that government has become their spokesman, voicing their sentiments, admitting that the system is rigged against them, and in true authoritarian fashion is assuring them that he will change it all and make their lives better.

Dan Rather wrote:

It was John Adams who penned the phrase, “a government of laws, and not of men.” This is how our Founding Fathers saw our national destiny. This is the spirit that our citizens, over the ages, have demanded of our political leaders follow. I suspect it is something most Americans still believe.

A government of laws. That’s our Constitution, the document which assigns power and authority to lawmakers and with which all of their actions must agree. Our Constitution calls for a separation of powers, our founders’ plan for making sure our nation would never be at the mercy of a strongman. The executive branch of our government must work with the legislative and the judicial branches; a president has limited power to act independently; but he can’t build 1900-mile walls, ban religious groups from entering the country, or deport 11 million people on his own. And such things can’t be accomplished within a week of a new president’s taking office; there’s a protocol in place for congressional action, which as we all know, can be a tortuous process which can takes months or even years. Donald Trump doesn’t know any of that, because he doesn’t read and has no experience with government; he knows only his own need for power.

A government not of men. That was the promise of our founders that our system of government would never allow for a strongman, a dictator, but that power would always rest on the will of the people expressed through their representatives who would be guided by our Constitution, “the Law of the Land.” And we’ve always felt secure in the belief that the atrocities we’ve seen happen in other countries couldn’t happen here.

Until now. Now we have a strongman who has captured the hearts and minds and unwavering loyalty of millions of our fellow citizens. According to MacWilliams, authoritarians “respond aggressively to outsiders, especially when they feel threatened.” Sound familiar? This tells us that at the root of authoritarianism is fear: fear of government, fear of oppression, fear of attack, fear of one’s own powerlessness against hostility. What’s the answer? The strongman: the person who “alone can fix it.” What authoritarians fail to recognize at the outset, however, is that such protection—even if it is real—comes at a high price. The problems they see in the current situation are nothing compared to the system that will be created by the strongman once in charge.

But that can’t happen here. This is the U.S.A. We don’t do things like that. Really? An authoritarian leader has a rabid core of supporters who will vote for him even if he grabs every single one of them by the crotch; and there are millions of them. He won the nomination of one of the two major political parties in the U.S.A. He’s polling in the 30% and 40% range for winning the presidency of the United States; unless he increases that percentage, he’ll lose, but let it sink in that over a third of your fellow citizens plan to cast their sacred vote for this empty suit. And last of all, the threat has been issued: this person plans to punish his political opponent if he is elected. It couldn’t happen here? It’s already happening. And we alone can fix it, through the power of the vote.

Since the root cause of attraction to authoritarian leaders is fear, we’d do well to remember these words from Martin Luther King:

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

 

 

 

 

Categories
Politics

When You’re a Star, You Can Do Anything–and Not Lose Votes!

Friday, October 7, should have been the day when Donald J. Trump had the decency to announce that he is ending his candidacy for the presidency of the United States. Actually, there have been many days when revelations about his past and his basic character should have ended his candidacy and would have ended it for anyone else who has ever sought our highest office. But since Trump has never been held to the usual standards, we can only guess how long the outrage over the hot-mic tape will last or how many endorsements he will lose because of it. The degree to which the general electorate has gone into the gutter with this person is appalling and frightening.

At the heart of his lewd comments in the tape released on Friday by the Washington Post is his statement:

“And when you’re a star, they let you do it,” Trump says. “You can do anything.”

“Whatever you want,” says another voice, apparently Bush’s.

“Grab them by the p—y,” Trump says. “You can do anything.”

In Trump’s view, celebrity has its privilege. No one says “No” to power. Even more shameful for us as a culture is that when you’re a celebrity, “You can do anything” and people will still vote for you and one of our two major parties will still support you as their candidate for leader of the free world.

Emma Gray, in a Huffington Post article titled “Trump’s Latest Comments about Women Are Rape Culture in a Nutshell,” says:

As he says to Bush: “Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”

This is what rape culture looks like.

In a statement, Planned Parenthood Action Fund Executive Vice President Dawn Laguens explicitly connected Trump’s 2005 commentary to sexual violence.

“What Trump described in these tapes amounts to sexual assault,” she said. “Trump’s behavior is disgusting and unacceptable in any context, and it is disqualifying for a man who is running for president of this country.”

And what was Trump’s immediate response?

“This was locker room banter, a private conversation that took place many years ago. Bill Clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course — not even close,” Trump said in a statement to The Washington Post. “I apologize if anyone was offended.”

Where does one even begin on this statement? The tape in question was captured in 2005, eleven years ago. That means he was 59 at the time he made these comments and only a few months into his third marriage. His first four children were ages 28, 24, 21, and 12.

So a married man with grown-up children who work for him and look to him as a role model admits of an unnamed woman:

“I moved on her and I failed. I’ll admit it.”

“I did try and fuck her,” Trump added. “She was married.”

He said he moved on the woman “very heavily,” even taking her furniture shopping. “

I moved on her like a bitch, but I couldn’t get there. And she was married.”

This is what a person with no shred of moral decency calls “locker room banter.” He was 59 years old, not in junior high; and he was not just talking about a girl he thought was “hot.” He was bragging about his sexual assaults on women. As a words person, I can’t get past his choice of “banter.” According to the first dictionary I grabbed off my shelf, “banter” is “good-humored, playful conversation.” There is nothing good-humored or playful about sexual assault, adultery, or being a scumbag father.

Many years ago? Eleven years is not all that long. Eleven years ago, the 9/11 attacks were already four years in the past, George W. Bush was president, I was still coloring my hair, and my daughter who is now a 34-year-old mother of two was a 23-year-old bride. I remember that day as if it were yesterday. By contrast, Bill Clinton was president from 1993 to 2001; so his well-known infidelities during his presidency happened years before 2005, yet Trump isn’t willing to give Clinton the same leniency he claims for himself.

Trump’s first two sentences—“This was locker room banter, a private conversation that took place many years ago. Bill Clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course ― not even close”—can be boiled down to “Boys will be boys.” This is just how guys talk when no one else is listening. Not only should every woman in the world be outraged by Trump’s making light of sexual assault but every man should be outraged by the suggestion that this kind of talk is part of “boy culture.”

Don’t even get me started on the non-apology: “If I’ve offended anyone . . . “! The media have spent the last fifteen or so months mining every statement that has come out of Trump’s mouth for any small nugget of sanity or decency; so when they came across the word “apologize,” you’d have thought they discovered gold or struck oil. Fortunately, many of them are intelligent enough to acknowledge that throwing the word “apologize” into a sentence in no way makes it a real apology and have publicly said so.

Mentioning things which Bill Clinton allegedly said is the standard school-yard defense: “Well, Billy Clinton said it first” or “Billy Clinton said worse things than I did.”

Billy Bush doesn’t get a pass here, but at least his statement comes closer to being a true apology:

“Obviously I’m embarrassed and ashamed. It’s no excuse, but this happened eleven years ago — I was younger, less mature, and acted foolishly in playing along. I’m very sorry.”

Although Bush also tries to play down the impact of his actions by pointing out that he was younger and less mature, he does at least admit to being embarrassed and ashamed and says “I’m very sorry,” without adding the caveat “IF anyone was offended.” He does seem to understand that his actions and words were offensive, which shows some small sign of a conscience. It should be noted, however, that in 2005 he was 34 years old—plenty old enough to know better.

Trump’s vulgar words were said eleven years ago, but his slimy response to them was spoken yesterday. He still doesn’t know that people ARE rightfully offended by this kind of trashy talk; and he still, at 70 years old, doesn’t understand what real contrition is or what constitutes a sincere apology. The only thing Donald Trump is sorry about is that the Washington Post got its hands on this tape. And this is a person who, a mere one month from today, could be elected as this nation’s president and commander-in-chief and the leader of the free world. God help us all!

Finally, after hours of hunkering down in his golden tower with his panicky campaign staff, Trump issued a video “apology,” which Paige Lavender of the Huffington Post amusingly calls a “hostage tape.” He begins this attempt at damage control with the statement, “Anyone who knows me knows these words don’t reflect who I am . . . I said it, I was wrong, and I apologize.” Actually, Donald, as you would say into your “faulty mic,” “Wrong!” We voters are learning more and more about who you are, and these words reflect your character exactly. In fact, you should know that few of us were really even shocked, because the person in this video is the person we’ve been watching and reading about for over a year. From the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.

Trump further invalidates his “apology” by returning to the school-yard tactics of talking about things Billy Clinton has done. In fact, nothing in the “hostage video” speaks of contrition or remorse. He sounds defiant, unrepentant, and evasive. He moves quickly from “I apologize” to brushing off the whole incident and trying to return to his lame, tired “campaign” lines and his attacks on Bill Clinton, who it bears noting is NOT on the ballot this November.

The only remaining question is WHY on earth anyone is still voting for this sexual predator! I guess he said it best: “When you’re a star, you can do anything.” To anyone still even considering voting for Donald Trump, you’ve been raped and you don’t even know it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories
Politics

Sometimes a Conscience Needs a Reboot

I grew up with such advice as “Always listen to your conscience,” “Follow your conscience,” and “Let your conscience be your guide.” Henry David Thoreau—in one of my favorite essays, “Civil Disobedience”—says the conscience is the highest authority, superseding the laws of one’s state or country. As members of the electorate, we’re often advised, “Vote your conscience.” Although all of those statements sound right and wise, they’re actually misleading. It may sound as if the conscience is the voice of the universe, which speaks the same language into the soul of every person. As we go through life, however, we learn a very different reality.

The conscience is not a single voice that speaks the same things to all, and conflicting loyalties and cross currents in life can make the conscience a confusing set of voices which don’t provide much of a guide at all. Adding to the confusion is the fact that what we believe is the conscience speaking is often our prejudices. And then there are some people whose consciences can’t be trusted at all, and we’d be scared of the results if they were to follow the advice “Let your conscience be your guide.”

Since at least the time of Socrates, philosophers have examined the concept of conscience, and so much has been written on the subject that it would take a long time to read and absorb it all. So I’m just going to select a few brief passages to illustrate the complexity of understanding the human conscience.

Larry May, in his article “On Conscience,” in the January 1983 edition of The American Philosophical Quarterly, compares conscience to virtue:

Conscience, like virtue, is a capacity which leads to socially beneficial consequences in those who develop it. . . .  Conscience places barriers in one’s path which contribute to the avoidance of wrong-doing. Yet conscience, unlike the virtues, seems to be grounded in a concern for the self, for the self’s inner harmony . . . Conscience does seem to be different from virtue in that it proceeds from and remains closely allied with self-love. [Conscience is] an egoistic concern which nonetheless leads to restraints on selfishness.

According to Mr. May, the chief end of the conscience is to act as inner peace keeper, not to make the world at large a better place.

Simpler definitions are found in a variety of online dictionaries:

An inner feeling or voice viewed as acting as a guide to the rightness or wrongness of one’s behavior.

 

The feeling that you know and should do what is right and should avoid doing what is wrong, and that makes you feel guilty when you have done something you know is wrong.

Anyone who’s ever wrestled with a guilty conscience—and that’s all of us—knows it’s not a pleasant experience. So what Larry May says about the conscience’s primary purpose being to act as inner peace keeper sounds reasonable.

These simple definitions, however, raise more questions than they answer. If everyone follows their conscience and votes their conscience, why do we not all do the same things and vote for the same candidate? And if the conscience is the inner peace keeper, how the heck can some people do some really awful things yet never seem to feel guilty about them? Do you think Hitler had a hard time sleeping at night, tossing and turning as he thought of all the Jews and other people his minions were torturing and murdering? Most of us would feel more guilt for accidentally running over a squirrel with our cars than Hitler visibly showed for torturing and murdering millions of human beings.

Most discussions of conscience include the concepts that the conscience is those internalized social norms which help individuals make distinctions between what is right and what is wrong and which cause individuals inner guilt and pain after knowingly violating those norms. But that leads us right back to the question of why we don’t all have the same sense of what is right and what is wrong. Obviously, we’ve internalized different norms, determined by the teachings of our parents, our schools, and our religious affiliations or lack thereof, to name a few.

I know people who don’t believe in killing insects, even the scourge of Florida living: the cockroach. Their consciences would make them feel very guilty if they were to violate that social/ethical norm. I, on the other hand, can viciously murder a cockroach without the slightest twitch of guilt if it dares to invade my home. I leave them alone outside, but the occasional one that has the audacity to cross my threshold will be murdered, and I will celebrate its death. Don’t judge.

I was raised in a fundamentalist religious household; the church which my family belonged to taught us a long list of “sins”: drinking, smoking, dancing, watching Hollywood movies, and a whole lot more that you wouldn’t even believe. My first task as an adult was to begin retraining my conscience to stop feeling guilty every time I entered a movie theater or drank a glass of wine. I’ve looked over my shoulder many times in the wine aisle of the supermarket, knowing intellectually that I had nothing to feel guilty about; but that stupid conscience just wouldn’t shut up.

So for some of us, the social norms we internalized were a bit extreme, causing our consciences to be overactive and need retraining to function more normally. The vast majority of the people I know have never experienced the slightest twinge of guilt when entering a movie theater, since that taboo was never included in their social norms.

People raised in the Jim Crow South didn’t feel guilty about what we today see as blatant, extreme racism, because their social norms included the idea that the black race was inferior and that the white majority was therefore justified in not treating them as equals. That sounds outrageous—and it IS outrageous—but to many people in my youth and way before I was born, that made perfect sense.

We all know those racist attitudes didn’t simply evaporate when the Civil Rights laws acknowledged equal rights for every citizen, regardless of race or skin color. Since expressing such attitudes publicly was no longer acceptable, however, those who held onto their prejudices no longer felt free to voice them. So for them, their silence on the subject had nothing to do with their consciences; they simply didn’t want to be socially ostracized.

Other people negotiate deals with their consciences to keep them quiet: I’m justified in doing x because someone did y or z to me. As a very young woman, I worked briefly with a middle-aged woman who had engaged in a long-term extramarital affair; and even though extramarital affairs violate nearly every ethical code and set of social norms, her conscience was fine with her actions because she’d struck a deal with it. Her first husband had cheated on her, and she’d divorced him because of it; her second husband was a model of love and faithfulness, but she cheated on him. Her justification was “I never did it until it was done to me.” Never mind that the person she was doing it to was not the same person who did it to her.

This, of course, is called rationalizing, and most of us have learned that it can be quite an effective way to quiet a troublesome conscience. We justify everything from disregarding our parents’ instructions as children to shirking our professional responsibilities to treating other people with disrespect because of things they’ve done to us or because we’ve decided for the purpose of building our case that they’re not good people and not worthy of proper treatment from us.

It’s safe to conclude, then, that the conscience is an unreliable, inconsistent guide to our actions. In fact, in some cases, it’s hard to distinguish conscience from prejudice or rationalization. Hitler rationalized that certain groups of people—Jews and others—were inferior and therefore needed to be eradicated; so instead of feeling guilty, he believed he was doing the world a service by being the one to perform the extermination.

The loud, rowdy, vile chanters at some presidential campaign rallies are among those who’ve simply felt the social pressure to keep quiet about their prejudices until someone came along who created a new social environment in which bigotry and violence are the accepted norms. For them, voting their consciences would in reality be voting their prejudices, because their consciences have accepted norms that deviate from every standard of what is good and moral.

The New Testament writer Paul, in his first letter to Timothy, speaks of a seared conscience: one which has accepted so much wrongdoing that it no longer has the ability to feel guilt, as skin that has been seared, or badly burned, no longer feels the sensation of pain. Most people can relate to that idea on a limited level. You broke a house rule as a teenager, and your conscience went into full inner turmoil; but because it was so much fun or your peers encouraged you to continue participating, the guilt lessened with each repetition. I think lots of voters, particularly those at the rowdy rallies, have such numbed consciences that their conscience votes can’t be trusted at all.

Many voters’ consciences pivot on a single issue, such as their disapproval of abortion. Their consciences simply won’t allow them to vote for a candidate who openly supports legal abortion, even though that candidate—if elected—would have little to no power to affect the abortion laws one way or the other. That means that their consciences then have to accept faults in the other candidate—faults which will strongly affect that candidate’s performance if elected—and that just doesn’t make much sense to me. As I’ve said before, I support having a more rational conversation about abortion, since it is an issue that has so deeply divided us as a country for so long. But single-issue voting can’t possibly be consistent. If your conscience’s rejection of the pro-choice candidate means it has to accept the pro-bigotry, pro-violence, pro-lying, pro-cheating, pro-unethical and possibly pro-illegal business dealings candidate, your conscience is really screwed up and it really needs a reboot.

Clay Shirky, in his Huffington Post article “There’s No Such Thing as a Protest Vote,” gives all of our consciences some things to chew on:

We’re in the season of protest vote advocacy, with writers of all political stripes making arguments for third-party candidates (Jill Stein, Gary Johnson), write-in votes (Bernie Sanders, Rod Silva), or refusing to vote altogether (#NeverTrump,#BernieOrBust.) For all the eloquence and passion and rage in these arguments, however, they suffer from a common flaw: there is no such thing as a protest vote.

The authors of these pieces rarely line up their preferred Presidential voting strategies — third-party, write-in, refusal — with the electoral system as it actually exists. In 2016, that system will offer 130 million or so voters just three options:

  1. I prefer Donald Trump be president, rather than Hillary Clinton.
  2. I prefer Hillary Clinton be president, rather than Donald Trump.
  3. Whatever everybody else decides is OK with me.

That’s it. Those are the choices. All strategies other than a preference for Trump over Clinton or vice-versa reduce to Option C.

Voting is not all about how virtuous and moral it makes us feel; it’s about intellectually deciding what is best for the prosperity and security of our country. Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn about your conscience if our national security and our world standing are jeopardized because your conscience won’t allow you to vote for someone who supports Planned Parenthood. Get a grip!

I guess the only way to conclude here is to say that if you’re going to vote your conscience, you’d better first examine your conscience and, if necessary, talk some sense into it. We’re all in this together, so we owe it to each other to get it right.