Trump Has Unleashed The Evils That Threaten Democracy

Democracy is a fragile system of government, depending as it does on the spirit and education of the citizenry and subject to a number of diseases that seem to plague democratic systems. These diseases, or as I call them the evils of democracy, can when left to fester undermine the system.

The first of these is fascism, originally denoted corporate statism.  The state is everything it rules everything and everything is owed to it. Children are taught what the state wants them to learn and taught a reverence and obedience to the state that borders on religious fanaticism. That reverence is often transferred to the state’s Leader.  Lip service is paid to elections the way large corporations have show-off shareholders meetings.  Fascism depends on conformity to the rules of the state and obedience to the masters of that state.  When the fascist leaders are the rich it's called an oligarchy or plutocracy.  When anyone questions the decision of the state they are judged either as enemies of the nation or mentally disturbed individuals. The state has rights the people do not and the people’s privileges are limited to life in an orderly regimented society. Societal stress on conformity and uniformity in thought and dress and action makes the body politic more suspect to fascism.

Another evil of democracy is cronyism.  Public officials, who take care of themselves, financially, and their relatives and close personal friends.  Elected officials who care only about the problems of certain constituents (based on party affiliation, geography or ethnicity).  Usually cronyism is motivated by greed.  The politics of ME takes precedence over the politics of party or of ideology. In our history we have seen this evil rise to national proportions in the 1870's, in the age of the Robber Barons (the 1990's) and the scandals of Teapot Dome (1920's). Today it is all around us and sunlight does expose it often enough.  The Trump administration, his appointees, his family and his retainers openly personify it.  The belief by too many that the group they belong to:  i.e. social class, economic tier, alumni association or fraternity/sorority, is somehow superior to others though called elitism is but a mutation of cronyism.

The third great evil of democracy is racism.  Unthinking and irrational attitudes toward usually minority populations e.g. religious, racial, gender, national origin.  The ills of society are blamed on the minority population and the majority is made to perceive a loss of power and societal control.  Restrictions on the rights of everyone are sold to the majority as a way to control the minority.  I lived through the 1960's when the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. led the civil rights movement to obtain equality for African Americans.  In the 1970's women and Latinos won similar access to civil rights.  And finally this century LGBT folks won the benefits of full citizenship.  In 2008 with the election of President Barrack Obama many thought we had entered a post racial state.  But unfortunately the attitude toward “that man in the White House” (a sobriquet they gave to FDR) became that black man in the White House and racism in all its manifestations raised its ugly head again.  Now the bigoted rail against Muslims and Mexicans.  And, anti-Semitism, which Americans thought they had beaten back by the 1950's, has again surfaced.

The great Governor of New York, Al Smith, once said the only cure for the ills of democracy was more democracy.   He may have been right and certainly I have advocated “more democracy” i.e. direct elections, same day registration, public ballot initiative, etc.  But the evil diseases of cronyism, fascism and racism are like cancers that may lie dormant but when they break out and spread they can devour the entire body politic. 

The answer is not to sit by and accept the evil and adapt to it.  As St. Paul said,    “Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.”  

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Political activists and candidates should fight the spread of these diseases at every level of government.  And the citizenry should insist that its public officials and the news media stop focusing on the peccadilloes of the Trump family and the sexual escapades of politicians and start dealing with the real issue before us in the twenty-first century: can we save and cure Democracy of the evils of Racism, Fascism, and Cronyism.

24 May 2017

DONALD TRUMP IS NO ANDREW JACKSON

                

I an effort to normalize people's attitudes toward President Donald Trump there has been an effort by his apologists and some sincere writers to favorably compare him to Andrew Jackson. Though Jackson is today a controversial President he was tremendously popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries.The Trumpeters seem to be unable to compare their leader with any other President of like popularity.

Obviously I did not know Andrew Jackson nor was he a friend of mine.  I have read all written about him by Schlesinger, Remini and Meacham and other s and I think it takes a misunderstanding of the history of our nation in the first half of the 19th century and a misjudgment of Andrew Jackson to equate him with Donald Trump.  Last summer I coauthored an essay comparing Trump’s campaign and rise to power with that of Jackson and most particularly stressed the unsuccessful ways in which Jackson’s opponents sought to defeat him that were being copied by Trump’s opponents (which later proved likewise unsuccessful}.

Andrew Jackson was a self-educated, and self-raised man who was well read and though he often shot from the hip he could shoot.  During the Revolutionary War, when only a youngster, Jackson was ordered by a British cavalryman to shine his boots.  He refused and was struck by that Britisher with his sword. One wonders what a young Donald Trump would have done had an enemy soldier told him to shine his boots - probably trade him a pair of his new ones.

Andrew Jackson was a lawyer who believed that the function of the law in America was to protect people.  He held no truck with autocracy or plutocracy.  Though married twice it was to the same woman.  When he became aware that her divorce from her first husband had not been finalized he, admitting his earlier mistake, remarried her.  For that he was pilloried and she was defamed and he spent his entire career and public life defending her.  He didn’t throw his wife, or for that matter any of his friends, under the bus.

Andrew Jackson was a soldier (a General) he was a Congressman, a Senator and a Governor.  He also owned his own business (a plantation in Nashville, Tennessee).  Born of Irish immigrants on the North/South Carolina border he grew up and lived on the frontier not in one of the eastern cities.

He was in many ways the first Populist President.  He believed in leveling the playing field so that new “men on the make”: farmers, merchants, and mechanics could compete with the moneyed planters and business owners and bankers.

He lost the Presidency in 1824 because he failed to get a majority of the electoral vote (though winning the popular vote) and won a strong popular vote victory in 1828 and 1832. He was an early advocate for popular election of electors and for universal white male suffrage (at that time the vote was often limited to white men with property).  He was the first President to call for the abolition of the Electoral College and direct popular election of the President (he would not be impressed by Donald Trump’s so called “win” of the Presidency}.

Andrew Jackson was fiercely patriotic.  As a General and later Governor of Florida he stood up strongly to the greatest power on the planet Great Britain.  His belief in the sanctity of the American Union was almost akin to a religious conviction. When the federal government’s power was challenged he responded with the fully believable threat that he would hang the putative rebels even though they were from South Carolina a state he carried.  He would undoubtedly have not only fired Gen. Flynn he would most likely have shot him for Treason. And I will not even venture a guess how he might have reacted to Trump’s flirtation with Vladimir Putin.

And, though no proponent of big government or bureaucracy he was fiercely protective of the powers of the federal government to protect the rights of the citizens of the United States.  I believe he would have abhorred the Bannon inspired Trump effort to dismantle the federal government so that its ability to enforce federal laws is crippled.  Jackson may have believed that as President he should decide which laws should be enforced but “by the eternal” he would enforce them.

Andrew Jackson as President banished the Cherokee and Creek Indians from Georgia, NC and Alabama to west of the Mississippi.  That stain on America’s image has become known as the Trail of Tears.  It was controversial at the time. New Englanders, having exterminated their Native Americans in the 1600's wanted to live with the Indians in the south east.  The southeastern whites wanted to kill off their Indian neighbors.  Jackson settled for the removal policy - by today's standards he was wrong.  I can only say that unlike Trump he was not relegating some people (e.g. Muslims and Mexicans) to the horrors of their own country and closing off the United States to political and economic refugees.

Andrew Jackson did not like the strangle hold that banks had on the growing American economy.  He particularly hated the Bank of America, which was a monopoly chartered by Congress and which held America’s funds as its deposits and in effect controlled the value of our currency and the ability to get credit.  Jackson vowed to destroy the Bank and he did so. He vetoed their charter renewal and moved all the federal funds into state banks. Today's economists will most likely argue he was wrong and his actions led to a recession in 1837.  But in the 1930's as America faced the sorrows of the Great Depression brought on in part by mindless speculation Jackson and his populist attack against big money and the wealthy plutocrats of the eastern cities brought a new popularity to the President of a hundred years before.

Andrew Jackson owned slaves who worked his plantation.  For that there was then and there is now no moral justification.   And if the Trump apologists want to excuse his misogynistic behavior and his low treatment of women by recalling Jackson’s slaveholding so be it. It makes them both morally flawed individuals but one of the two is living now in the 21st century and there is no excuse that the culture allows it.

There is so much more that Andrew Jackson as President accomplished. He instituted national political conventions to replace Congressmen nominating Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates.  He fired cabinet members when they wouldn’t follow the administration policy and defended those whom his critics excoriated. After he served two terms and rejected any third attempt he retired to his plantation outside Nashville and for ten years remained a force in American political life.  He was responsible for the election of two Presidents: Van Buren and Polk; and, undoubtedly a major player in the decade's long effort to join Texas to the American union. He is considered the founder of the still existent Democratic Party and his campaign of 1828 considered the first modern voter oriented national campaign.

In conclusion may I borrow from a bon mot that made the rounds among intellectuals and political wags in France in the 1960's about their then President and offer this --- I do not think that Donald J Trump thinks he is the reincarnation of Andrew Jackson.  But, as he sits at his desk in the oval office, with the picture of President Jackson looking down at him from the left, I do believe that President Trump may just for a moment think that Andrew Jackson may have thought he was Donald Trump.  

18 March 2016

TRUMP CONCOCTS PROBLEM SO HE CAN “FIX” IT.

           

Donald Trump has used the office of President to now give credence to a long held alt-right conspiracy theory that millions of undocumented alien residents of the country vote in our elections. There is not one scintilla of evidence that this is the case. In fact every reputable study and bipartisan reviews have found our elections among the cleanest in the democratic world and no longer plagued with the frauds often perpetrated by various party machines prior to the 1960's.

I believe that the people around Trump will use his need to believe in these illegal votes to explain to himself how he was out polled by a woman on Nov. 8, 2016, to seek voter repression legislation at the federal level to keep minorities, young people and poorer people from exercising the franchise.  These efforts which the courts have rejected in some states but which were successful in North Carolina and Wisconsin in helping Trump will be his “fix” for the problem that doesn’t exist.

There are imperfections in our democratic processes.  As the great Democrat Al Smith said “the cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy”. Rather than suppress the vote the federal government should be concentrating on protecting the right to vote and making it easier for all to participate in the electoral system.  Those who oppose the Trumpian vision of a controlled democracy should rally around real democratic reforms and not allow the myth of election fraud to dominate the conversation.

1.  We should demand the direct election of the president of the US. Abolish the antiquated Electoral College and join other democracies in directly electing the one official who represents the entire nation.

2.  We should adopt some of the ideas that are working well in the states: Same day registration (with id evidence required of course); voting by mail; early voting; unquestioned right to an absentee ballot; sufficient polling places to eliminate lines and hour waiting time.

3. We should end the two party structural monopoly of our election system by adopting open primary voting, or the California multiple candidate primaries with top two runoffs, and universal ballot access for candidates without requiring fees or signatures.

4. If we truly want to increase the electorate than give the voters a reason to participate.  End the partisan gerrymandering that make most of our congressional and state legislative districts one party bastions and replicas of the 19th century English rotten boros. Set term limits for Senators and Representatives so that new faces can flourish.

5. And, if we want to really democratize our democracy than enact public financing of campaigns - end unlimited corporate donating and allow the average working man or woman to compete in political contests.

The only threat I could see to democracy last Nov. 8th was the result, with the election of an authoritarian minded pseudo populist who is spearheading right wing fanatics in the greatest threat to our democracy since the abomination of slavery tore this nation apart. America ended slavery and unified as a better nation. 

What will happen if the Congress says No to some of Trumps ideas? Does the capital get burned down and the President blame illegal aliens or Muslims?  Wake Up America - It CAN Happen Here.

26 January 2016. 

Trump values or American values a fork in our road.

      

I was born seventy years ago in 1946.  It was the first year of peace since 1938, and it became the start of a post WWII world order that lasted until 1990 when the United States of America became the world’s one great superpower. Now many posit that 2016 will be the beginning of a new world order, somewhat similar to the post WWI order of competing and often hostile powers, with the United States merely a player neither a leader nor a symbol.

In the days of my youth we in America saw our country as the symbol of democracy. We were engaged in a cold war with an evil empire that was godless and was patently totalitarian. As that time period unfolded we saw the expansion of human rights across our nation and the world: civil rights for African-Americans one hundred years after emancipation; women to be treated equally with men fifty years after obtaining the right to vote; and, a growing tolerance and acceptance of differing lifestyles to the point that marriage equality and many other equal rights were guaranteed to those in the LGBTQ community.   

In the world we saw the end of apartheid in South Africa; the final eradication of fascism in Spain and Portugal; the end of European colonial rule of third world peoples and the restoration of democracy and true nationhood to the peoples of Eastern Europe and the Russian dominated states of the USSR.

The galloping pace of technological change has reached levels that were considered science fiction in 1946 and many not even thought of in 1986.

But, in those seventy years something seems to have been lost. I’m not sure how to sum it up but I can describe some of what we’ve lost. As Americans we’ve lost our self-assurance that things were always going to get better. That education would enable one to earn a really good living and provide for a family. That America was a middle class nation with only a few very rich and with a sincere attempt beginning in the 1960's to end poverty. We seem to have forgotten that the World Wars taught us the lesson that all nations must work together to solve the world's problems and that multilateral organizations, e.g. the United Nations, and coalitions, e.g. the Gulf War; and world agreements, e.g. Climate Change, were the preferred norm.

We lost sight of the fact that our nation’s neutrality in religious conflicts was because we promoted toleration of all beliefs something which most profess. Our leaders presented us with great challenges: John F Kennedy admonishing us not to ask what the country can do for us but what we can do for the country; Martin Luther King calling on all of us to judge people by the content of their character not the color of their skin; and, Lyndon B Johnson proclaiming to Congress that “We shall overcome”.  These words seem hollow today as we wallow in nostalgia for a time that never was or younger generations react to such sentiments with cynical derision. We respond to slogans like making America Great Again as if it no longer is.

At the close of WWI America rejected the changing world and the mantle of world leadership and “returned to normalcy”. For twelve years the country was run by businessmen, millionaires and their political puppets. It took a great depression to awaken Americans to the need for social programs that would build a middle class that could be strong on its own; and the most horrific War to make us realize that we would only be safe and secure when all people are safe and secure.

2017 will open with the inauguration of a new American President - Donald Trump.  Will he be the worst leader this nation has had since Warren Harding?  Will Trumpism unleash the forces of intolerance and fascism that we rejected in the 1930's and 1940's?  Will we simply replace him in four or eight years with a modified version of this new type of leader?  Will we exit from the World and retreat into a fortress American?

I do not know. But I do know that the answers to those questions will not be decided by Trump -- they will be decided by the American people. We can continue the way we are going -- two America’s one happily ruled by a billionaire oligarchy and the other continuing the age old struggle for human dignity for all. We can continue to be a culture that is symbolized by concern for ME and a denial of realities as we build a Wonderland world of myths to replace one based on the reality of truth and facts.

We should return to the basic values upon which our nationhood was built -- values common to all the major religious and philosophical movements of the past two thousand years -- to treat our fellow human beings as we want to be treated with respect and kindness, to tolerate the lifestyles of others, to respect the beliefs of others, and to stand firm against those who would trample over those values and the rights of human beings to live in dignity.

When the Puritans came to settle New England they wanted to plant a City on a Hill - a New Jerusalem.  After the Revolution of 1776 and Constitution of 1787 Americans saw themselves as “the last best hope of mankind”.  This was not just chauvinistic braggadocio because most to f the world also saw it that way.  The revolutions in Latin America and in Europe and later in Africa and Asia would almost always copy the American in their declarations, their constitutions and their symbols.  We didn’t always do the right thing at first but when we did the wrong thing we tried to atone for the mistakes.  And after wars that were justified we reach out the hand of friendship to former enemies.

I’m proud of my country and I’m proud of the positive aspects of our history these past two hundred and forty years.  In 2086 children born this past year will turn seventy.  I hope that they will be proud of America’s performance as a nation this twenty-first century.  I pray that they will see 2017 as the beginning of the end of Trumpism and its’ recipe of intolerance and hatred fueled by lies and distortions and hiding behind a wall of isolation.  If my generation and that of my children reject the ME culture and remember what America accomplished when the operative word was WE then I do not doubt that WE will defeat Trumpism as WE have the other negative ism’s of the twentieth century.

31 December 2016