Quick Hits: Shultz on Climate Change, The Minimum Wage, and Liz Cheney

 A few links and quick thoughts on three different subjects today:

1. George Shultz passed away away on Sunday at the age of 100 (!). Shultz was a Republican of a different era, who no doubt looked at the GOP of today with a combination of confusion and frustration. Perhaps, as my straight ticket voting grandmother has said, he was glad he was near the end and wouldn't have to deal with politics anymore. Shultz was Secretary of State for Ronald Reagan when Reagan decided it was time to take action to limit the compounding damage to the Earth's ozone layer. As this 2019 article from Forbes notes, there was far less conclusive science in the 1980s about the damage to the ozone layer than their is today regarding climate change. 

Thing about that: in the 1980s scientists were legitimately divided on the issue of the ozone layer being damaged, to what degree, or what to do about it. And a conservative Republican President, in the words of Shultz:

"(D)id something that nobody ever does anymore ... (President Reagan) went to the scientists who didn't agree and put his arm around them and said, 'We respect you, but you do agree that if it happens it's a catastrophe, so let's take out an insurance policy." 

Imagine a Republican at any significant level of government doing something similar today with their own party. Staking out a position that, if wrong, still wouldn't hurt us, but if right might save us. It's hard to imagine any Republican taking a progressive stance on combating climate change, let alone the party head (as President Reagan was) doing so. Shultz truly was from a different era, and era that is rapidly passing on. 

2. Interesting fact check from The Dispatch on the minimum wage debate. While this site is pretty conservative, they cite legitimate sources in establishing that President Biden's statement that "all the economics show" that a minimum wage will be a boon for the economy isn't accurate. Of course, the Democrats would cite other studies and statistics to tell you raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour will be like a rising tide raising all ships. Ultimately, the truth is that it's unlikely that all economists will agree on anything, given their various economic-political view points. But it's probably a pretty safe bet to say that whatever action is taken (including inaction) will have far reaching consequences. Given that many states (29 plus the District of Columbia) have already established minimum wages above the national standard of $7.25 an hour there is probably a middle ground that makes sense. It would probably also make sense to tether the minimum wage to economic factors year to year or every five to ten years to ensure that we don't end up in a situation where the federal minimum wage is so far below the poverty line again. 

3. Finally, Axios reported that Kevin McCarthy, the House Minority Leader, told Liz Cheney she needed to apologize for voting to Impeach President Trump. Cheney, a skilled tactical politician, called the bluff and survived the secret ballot in the Republican caucus to remove her from the leadership. She remains the number three in the GOP House hierarchy, and has continued to stake out her position as an anti-Trump voice in the party. It is hard to imagine how badly McCarthy and other leadership must hope President Trump fades into oblivion to allow them to unite against the Biden administration without litmus tests of loyalty to MAGA. That said, with fringe candidates like Representatives Taylor Greene and Boebert continuing to stake out more and more real estate on the conspiracy theory fringe it's hard to imagine the party unifying over much in the near term. At any rate, good on Representative Cheney for sticking to her position, voting her conscious, and staring down the attempt to get her to reverse course for political survival. Our government would be far better with more members, on both sides of the aisle, willing to do the same. 

Governing Is Hard

Comparatively speaking, Republicans have a huge advantage over Democrats when it comes to governing. Even during an extremely dysfunctional time of unified government in 2017 and 2018 the Republicans were able to push their two item agenda forward by getting tax cuts and pushing Judicial appointments at all levels of the Federal bench. Simply put, it's easier to pull everyone together when you have more narrow objectives. Additionally, much of the Republican agenda can be moved via Executive Branch action, such as deregulation efforts. Taken together, they have an easier time governing.

Another factor, however, lies in the party leadership's willingness to approach politics as a zero sum game. Mitch McConnell is the expert in this approach. His philosophy can be clearly seen in his refusal to hold a vote for Merrick Garland's nomination to the Supreme Court in 2016, while pushing through Amy Coney Barrett's nomination in 2020. Garland, nominated on March 16, 2016, was railroaded by McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader at the time, because it was too close to a Presidential election in his opinion (citing Joe Biden's prior statements; the man is skilled at this!). Coney Barrett, nominated on September 26, 2020, was rushed through the process and confirmed to the court in spite of her nomination coming six months later into the process than Garland's. 

McConnell is willing to make up rules and precedents to serve the party's larger goals, and is equally willing to discard those same things if it serves those same goals (or, at least, find new rationales to justify the discarding). McConnell, by the way, knew that the huge tax cuts passed in 2017 couldn't pass the Senate filibuster threshold. So what did he do? He fast tracked it using the budget reconciliation process. There was no hemming or hawing about the need to work across the isle; simply a unilateral pushing of the broader agenda. And, of course, he led the path to eliminate the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees to get Neil Gorsuch on the court quickly for the very seat that Garland was refused even a vote for. 

Of course it was Harry Reid (D) who eliminated the filibuster for lower court nominations in a prior congress. While that move was in response to unprecedented opposition to judicial nominees by then Minority Leader McConnell, the reality is that it was Democrats who broke that seal. The difference is that McConnell not only was glad they did it, but then used it to further push his agenda. Democrats may have gotten some of Obama's nominees through, but McConnell and the GOP then had carte blanche to load the courts aggressively with no real opposition throughout the Trump Administration. They also had precedent that they were able to point to, by the Democrats, for their action to eliminate the filibuster for the Supreme Court. 

If the shoe was on the other foot, there is no doubt what McConnell would do at present with a GOP house and control of the White House: he would push through their highest priority agenda using reconciliation if he could. Beyond that, he would do it with a smile. McConnell is better at politics than his Democratic counter parts. Some of that is due to him heading a coalition that is far more narrow in their agenda (lower taxes, deregulation, anti-abortion, pack the courts, etc.). Part of that is that he recognizes that no matter what you do you will lose power, as that's the nature of the system. Given that, you are incentivized not to work with the other side, but instead to push through as much as you can, as fast as you can, for as long as you can. This definitely isn't right, but when you see the Democrats force through something on budget reconciliation and hear the cries from the other side of the aisle just remember: they would have done the same exact thing. 

The Future of the Economy

 A very brief post today, but I did want to speak a bit to GM's recent announcement that they will go all electric by 2035, phasing out all gas and diesel engines. This is an ambitious plan, to say the least, given that they are just over four years since releasing their first full service electric car into the market. That said, fortune favors the bold (most times), and I suspect this will end up being a good move for GM in the long term. 

I've often been somewhat perplexed by both the Democrats and Republicans approaches to alternative (green) energies. This seems to be an area where there are a few undebatable facts:

1. fossil fuels are finite, and likely to run out this century. This will lead to catastrophic shortages long before the last feasible resource is pulled from the ground.

2. This, in turn, makes it pretty clear that whichever nation manages to master green, renewable energies will dominate the globe economically by the end of this century. 

3. The US became a world power in the 20th century on the strength of our natural resources. We used that strength to position ourselves well to maintain global influence as the world became smaller with globalization. If we want to maintain some semblance of that international influence, as well as the domestic lifestyle, we have to create a modern day economy that thrives on whatever the next wave of energy is. 

That argument, conveniently and intentionally, leaves aside the "hottest button" in this argument, which is climate change*. I, for one, think this part of the argument is as persuasive as it is undeniable. I also recognize that the discussion on climate change unfortunately falls into "facts are not as viable as my own opinion" territory. Still, conservative or liberal I think we all have a stake hold in the economy of the future, and green energy is inarguably going to be the linchpin to economic viability, let alone dominance, throughout the remainder of the 21st century and into the 22nd. 

I cannot fathom how that isn't a winning argument that both sides of the political spectrum can rally around, but GM, at least, seems to have bought into phasing out fossil fuel dependency as a factor in their long term economic viability. It should be interesting to see if Ford or another major manufacturer follows suite. Regardless, good on GM for taking a bold position and trying to lead a major portion of the US industrial economy into the future realistically, as opposed to so many segments that seem comfortable keeping their collective heads in the sand. 

*By the way, if you didn't see, 2020 tied 2016 as the hottest year on record globally. Yeah, this stuff is real, we (human beings) are the single biggest contributor, and bad things are going to continue to happen as the globe warms. 

Hank Aaron, BLM and a Reflection on Black History Month

As we venture further into 2021 we enter February, and with it Black History Month. 2020 brought us a year of greater clarity regarding where race relations stand in our country, and how far from equality we still remain. The Black Lives Matter protests through the year sparked counter protests, counter movements, and a great deal of social commentary. All of these things fell short of simply acknowledging the truth: America's original sin, that of slavery and deeply ingrained racism, is alive and strong today. That is not to say any aspect of this discussion is simple; quite the opposite, all of it is complex and multi-layered. But if we cannot start from the position that racism is still a strong factor in American society then it's hard to start a dialogue to move forward. 

I thought quite a bit about 2020, Black Lives Matter, and the state of race relations when reading this article about Hank Aaron's life. Aaron, who died on January 21, 2021, was the "home run king" of baseball from 1974 until Barry Bonds passed him in 2007. Both Bonds and Aaron dealt with pushback as they approached the records, but whereas Bonds pushback was related to his reported use of performance enhancing drugs (at least on the surface), the vitriol directed at Aaron was overtly racist. If you read the article, which was published on The Ringer, you'll get vibrant examples of the hate mail and outright death threats Aaron dealt with as he approached the record, which had been held since 1921 by Babe Ruth. 

Part of my struggle in engaging in discussions with certain segments of the American population is the way in which they want to open scientific or data driven fact to debate. This is true in the area of disproportionality statistics as well. We know that black Americans are far more likely to be killed in police shootings than white Americans. We also know that there are significant disparities in the area of healthcare and health outcomes. Further, we also know that there are significant gaps in socioeconomic status between black Americans and their white counterparts, as well as frequency and impact of traumatic events in childhood. These truths, along with others, are well researched and proven. They are not a matter of opinion; they are a matter of fact. 

I'm currently reading Jon Meacham's book "His Truth is Marching on: John Lewis and the Power of Hope." While I have a ways to go in the book, reading through Lewis' early life, and realizing the relative proximity of full blown Jim Crow era America is always something that shakes me to my core. I faced that same reality reading the articles about Aaron after his death, realizing how much of his career was played in Jim Crow America. I am a sucker for pointing out how terribly human beings conceptualize time; what seems to be a "long time ago" is really the blink of an eye. The impact of what happened a generation ago cannot be understated. Simply put, I am more likely to succeed in this world because of who my parents are and where I was born. The same was true for them, and so on. 

Of course, many people rise above their "station in life," but on the whole we cannot afford to pretend that slavery from 1619 through the end of the Civil War, coupled with systemic overt racism, as well as de facto covert racism, hasn't led to the myriad of studies I noted above. As we enter Black History Month I hope that in 2021 we can take a step closer to acknowledging these impacts society wide, and committing to work on tangible action to help reduce socioeconomic inequality, justice system inequality, health inequality and childhood trauma inequalities, among other aspect I did not note. The reality is that we are far to comfortable as a society to let generations pass and let the problems change, without making the hard decisions necessary to resolve the root issues that led to and perpetuate the problems in the first place. 

Transitions, Pardons, and History

 So I have reflected a bit about the completely abnormal nature of the Trump Presidency in the last week. There are certainly no shortage of areas to mine for differences, but two came to mind: transitions and pardons. I am an avid reader of political memoirs and, on Inauguration night there was a video of the three Presidents immediately preceding President Trump which made me think of a few that do a good job putting the Presidency into context. That context, in turn, helps to show just how (dangerously) different the Trump Presidency was. 

The video, which appears to be recorded after the Inauguration ceremony, features Presidents Obama, Bush, and Clinton standing around and talking about the office, and the nature of taking the Oath of Office and becoming President. Watching these three men stand around and discuss the nature of taking that responsibility on made me reflect on a book by Jon Meacham entitled "Destiny and Power". This book, about George H.W. Bush, covers the man's life, including his time in office. It also has a reflection on the letter he wrote Bill Clinton and left in the Oval Office, in which President Bush told the man who had just defeated "your success is now our country's success. I'm rooting for you." 

Compare that to the nearly two and a half months of President Trump refusing to acknowledge that which was obvious: he had lost, and not necessarily closely, to Joe Biden. There is no doubt that George H.W. Bush was disappointed about losing to Bill Clintion. Bush was a man who rushed to enlist in the armed services to fight in World War II, a man who was shot down over the Pacific in combat, and a man who devoted his life to public service. You are not that sort of person, let alone a person who builds a political career that makes the Presidency even a discussion point, without being competitive. Extremely competitive. And yet, "I'm rooting for you." And, more impressively, everything George H.W. Bush did as former President Bush demonstrated respect for President Clinton, and for the office of the Presidency. 

In his recently released memoir, "A Promised Land," President Obama reflects on his own transition into office from George H.W. Bush's son, George W. Bush. No doubt that President George W. Bush's actions played heavily on President Obama's own actions, welcoming President-Elect Donald Trump to the White House days after the election, and joining him the morning of his Inauguration through President Trump taking the Oath of Office. 

I was also drawn to a passage in George W. Bush's memoir, "Decision Points," in which he discusses the process of end of term Presidential pardons. Specifically, President Bush notes (page 104-105):

"One of the biggest surprises of my presidency was the flood of pardon requests at the end.  I could not believe the number of people who pulled me aside to suggest that a friend or former colleague deserved a pardon.  At first I was frustrated.  Then I was disgusted. I came to see the massive injustice in the system. If you had connections to the president, you could insert your case into the last-minute frenzy.  Otherwise, you had to wait for the Justice Department to conduct a review and make a recommendation.  In my final weeks in office, I resolved that I would not pardon anyone who went outside the formal channels..."

Compare these two aspects of the Presidency, transitions and pardons, to the actions of President Trump. The opposite of welcoming in the man who defeated him, and seeking to help him, President Trump sought to actively undermine him, and even overturn the election through illegal means. Rather than prioritize pardon requests that came through the formal channels of Justice Department review, President Trump prioritized pardons brought to him by those who had access, access which was in some instances perhaps paid for. 

At the end of this reflection, I recommend another book: "The President's Club" by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy. From Truman through to Obama, all Presidents in the modern era played by a similar set of rules after they left office. No doubt President Trump will play by a very different set of rules; he did, after all, do it his way, and has left us no reason to doubt that anything beyond an extension of that train wreck will continue. 

2020: The Plague Year

Part of the joy of writing a blog for my own reflection is that I sometimes structure my writing, and sometimes I just go for it. My post last Monday, "The Record on the Trump Presidency," was the latter; I just went for it off the top of my head without any preparation. I wrote it, I gave it a brief onceover edit, and then I set it to publish. Overall, I think it holds up, but I have to admit that it didn't even publish before I realized that I had inexplicably listed out ten things that were noteworthy related to the Trump Presidency and had somehow failed to even note COVID-19.

I suppose that's in large part because there is a fundamental difference between the ten things listed in that post and COVID-19. For those ten, they are a part of my world at least tangentially, but they don't have clear impact on me day to day. The pandemic, however, has fundamentally shifted how all of us live, and has had an undeniable impact on all of our day to day existence. In a sense, I think that I listed out the ten things in the post so easily because they stuck out to me, but they also demonstrate the disconnect between our representative government in Washington D.C. and "real life." I'm sure that speaks to something about our politics, although I'm not going to go down that rabbit trail today. Instead, I'm going to reflect on the pandemic a bit as we pass a year since it was first reported on in China, and rapidly approach a year since it made the way to the US. 

Lawrence Wright is an author that I've read on and off again through the years. Most notably, his book "The Terror Years: From Al-Qaeda to The Islamic State" was an exceptional read on the "war on terror" and the limitations and failures therein. Wright also works for The New Yorker, and he published a piece entitled "The Plague Year" on December 28, 2020. As is typical for Wright, the piece is well written, well researched, and I'd encourage you to read it on your own.

It is not often that we realize vividly that we are living through history. Of course, we intuitively know that something happening in the world will later be written about in history texts. Yet, all too often, those things are much like the list of things about the Trump Presidency I published 1/18/21; close enough we are aware of them, far enough away they don't impact us directly. 2020 was different, however, and that was in large part due to the global pandemic that ground things to a halt, all the while altering our day to day life in ways that were previously unimaginable to most. 

In my lifetime there have now been two distinct moments that I can recall knowing I was living in history. The first was September 11, 2001. It's hard to believe that day is nearing two decades old; I so vividly remember aspects of that day, and the realization in that moment of living in history. The second happened much more recently: January 6, 2021 will also live on, and for similar reasons: our nation was attacked by terrorist forces. While the 2001 attacked was international terrorism versus the 2021 attack being domestic terrorism, both shared the target of the seat of our Democracy. Moments like these, much like December 7, 1941, will hold on because they were a direct attack on our very way of life. 

The coronavirus pandemic will live on, but differently. Unlike the dates in the prior paragraph, there wasn't a "moment" that you could point to. We saw the pandemic coming, but for many it didn't seem real. In the time between the pandemic becoming a regular news topic in January 2020 and the seemingly sudden suspension of life as we knew it in March 2020, I read quite a bit about the influenza pandemic of 1918. I sought to understand ways in which life might change, while also seeking to understand how the differences in how we live in 2020 might impact the progression of the coronavirus pandemic. 

Fundamentally, it seemed to me that the outcome of the 2020 pandemic would come down to a question of technological advancement. The prior record for a new, successful vaccine was about four years; could we beat that? We have improved ability to communicate with every citizen in the country; could we leverage that? We have technology to help keep people alive with the worst of symptoms; could we maximize that? Questions like this hinted at the potential for us to deal with this pandemic far more successfully than we, as a nation and as a world dealt with the 1918 pandemic.

Unfortunately, on the other side were modern factors that could (and would) hold us back. We live in a globalized world, with travel easy and everywhere, with interstate travel extremely easy, coast to coast travel the norm, and international travel a breeze. Would we reign that in? We live in an environment that has demolished trust in the news, in science, and in fact. Would we put that on pause and rally people around indisputable fact? Our politics had continued their evolution to a zero sum game, and 2020 was a Presidential election year. Would we rise towards our better angles for the common good? 

The answer, sadly, was that we would not willingly reduce our interstate and international travel; the economy depended on it. Furthermore, we wouldn't really even limit much of our local travel and day to day living; our "freedom" depended on it. Quite the opposite of putting the assault on truth on pause, the pandemic and reporting on it led to a continued blurring of fact and fiction. Our national discourse further became one where opinion is fact if you scream it loud enough, and any fact is merely opinion, no matter how well researched. And as for politics, not only did we not rise towards our better angles, we instead watched as the very core of our democracy came under the most vibrant, sustained assault since the Civil War. 

What Wright called "The Plague Year" provides context to everything. We became further isolated, and many of us double or tripled down on Social Media as a viable way to "stay in touch" rather than seeing it as the dangerous medium for disinformation that it is. As we journeyed further down that rabbit hole we further entered echo chambers that fed to our worst fears, our most outrageous impulses. Conspiracy theories (always an American pass time) took hold. Qanon gained strength. Bill Gates was going to track us through the vaccine. The types of fanatical theories that used to be good for an eye roll and a laugh became dangerously close to the mainstream opinion in some circles; they gained audience with the President and became a part not only of his inaction towards the virus, but later of his attempt to stage a coup to stay in power. 

The pandemic provided cover to avoid discussions about race which came to the forefront in 2020. It served as a two way weapon; Black Lives Matter protesters could simultaneously be called hypocrites for protesting during a pandemic while also be used as the excuse for an armed siege of Michigan's State House. Everything occurred within the context of the pandemic; the Plague Year encompassed all. 

How did the pandemic impact the Presidential Election? It shut down the Democratic Primary earlier than it would have in its absence. It damaged what, at least superficially, appeared to be a strong economy. In the context of those two points, it likely damaged President Trump's re-election chances. At the same time, it provided an "enemy" that was safe to rally everyone around, and to unify the country towards. Had President Trump taken that route, and sought to unify the country against the coronavirus, it is likely that he would have had approval ratings above 50%, something he never once achieved in his Presidency*. Simply put, the pandemic provided President Trump an opportunity to rise above and become something greater than what he was on track to be. With a semi-competent response it is likely he would have sailed to re-election. It also provided him an opportunity to bury his presidency, and to ensure he joined Jimmy Carter as the only single term President in the modern era whose term did not extend his party's control (i.e. George H.W. Bush extended the party control from two terms of Reagan**).

The reality of the Trump Presidency can best be understood in the context of the pandemic, because it distilled him down to being more of what he truly was. He was a divider, who sought to push others against one another and to align himself with whoever won in his mind. He was a master at creating conflict out of nothing. He was a disruptor to the system, bent on undoing everything his predecessor(s) did, even if he didn't have a plan to replace it, even if his plan to replace it was basically the same thing, only worse. Up until the end, President Trump was a man who knew how to run on a cult of personality, but the emperor repeatedly was found to have no clothes. Nowhere was this more evident than his pandemic response: promising it would go away, claiming it wasn't bad, hypothesizing about injecting bleach or sunlight to cure it, pushing half-baked cures that the FDA couldn't and wouldn't dream of approving. If you want to know how he ran anything (foreign policy, domestic policy, his businesses) all you need to is look at the disjointed, haphazard response he oversaw to the pandemic. He was who he was and, much like all of us, he became more of it in a high pressure situation.

Make no mistake, it could have been better. Testing in Canada is far more efficient and effective than it is in the US. Other nations are already lapping us in their vaccination regimes. We decided to take the road less traveled, the road that wasn't based in science and research, but was instead based on a lack of responsibility by the federal government, and the impulses of a man who understood marketing a persona, but not governing. We will never know how much better things might have been had we put together a coherent plan at the federal level to manage and respond to this pandemic. All we can know for sure is that 2020 became The Plague Year, and history will likely judge our nation's response as inadequate to the moment. For all his failures in things like foreign policy, President Trump will likely be most remembered for his administration's response to COVID-19. Or, more accurately, his failure to respond in an effective manner.  

*President Trump will leave office the only President in the history of Gallup's polling to not achieve an approval rating of at least 50%; his average approval rating will be 41% which is a record low. 

**Single Term Presidents who ran for re-election include Bush (following Reagan), Carter, Ford (followed Nixon), Hoover (followed Harding and Coolidge), Taft (followed McKinley and T. Roosevelt), Benjamin Harrison, Van Buren (followed Jackson), John Quincy Adams (followed Monroe) and John Adams (followed Washington). So, basically, Trump becomes the third President ever to represent a change from the prior President's party, serve a single term, and lose re-election, along with Benjamin Harrison and Jimmy Carter. That, coupled with being only the third President to be impeached (along with Clinton and Andrew Johnson), the only President to be impeached twice, and the President with the most bi-partisan impeachment, all  indicate that his Presidency was quite consequential historically, even if he is likely to be ranked among the worst Presidents by historians. 

Are You Ready For 2024?

Politics happens fast, and predictions tend to fall to the wayside even faster. In just the last twelve years the Republican Party has been left for dead by media pundits at least twice. First, after the second term of George W. Bush, which resulted in a landslide election that not only brought President Obama to office but also grew strong majorities in the House and Senate. This election led to James Carville writing a book entitled "40 More Years: How the Democrats Will Rule the Next Generation." Of course, Carville's prediction fell just a bit short; before the book could have a paper back printing in 2011 you had the 2010 midterms, which saw the GOP surge to take back the House, and nearly take back the Senate. 

And here we are again, with analysis wondering where the GOP will go from here, and think pieces declaring the end of the Republican party. This is, of course, not unprecedented in our history (I'm looking at you Whigs), but it is unlikely. That said, I believe it's clear that Trumpism gives the GOP a bigger stumbling block than the end of the Bush administration did. It's important to recognize key factors why that may be:

1. The GOP finds itself torn in two in a way it hasn't in quite some time. The biggest fault line lies squarely over one of the hallowed centerpieces of conservative politics: small government with balanced budgets. While the GOP hasn't actually believed in these things for years*, they've at least been uniform in professing their belief in these things. Now, you have a populist surge within the Republican party, headed by Trump and articulated by individuals like Josh Hawley (Senator from Missouri) that is in alignment on some issues with Bernie Sanders. While the Presidencies of Reagan and George W Bush saw national debt increases north of 100%, they at least stuck to the talking point of small government and balanced spending. Trump didn't, and now the party is openly split between those who truly seem to believe in these ideals and those who openly do not. 

2. Government spending isn't the only place where the GOP finds itself at a crossroads. The merger of the Republican Party with conservative Christians took place over many decades, but crystalized under Karl Rove's leadership during George W Bush's two terms in office. The Presidency of Donald Trump, however, has turned that on its head. Not to say that conservative Christian's are not, by and large, supportive of President Trump. They are; they just have to engage in a lot more mental, ethical and moral gymnastics to get there. This, in turn, has led to some splintering within the "religious right" and GOP coalition. Rove famously pointed out that conservative Christians either vote Republican or they don't vote; George W Bush listened to him where his father didn't, and he ensured that his platform spoke to this group directly. It was an easier sell, however: In Bush you had a born again Christian who genuinely believed what he was saying. In Trump you have the Access Hollywood, multi-divorced, man who has a moral standing that is the anthesis of what Christian conservatives claim to stand for. For many, it was worth it, and the evidence is seen in three names: Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Coney-Barrett. But, as President Lincoln once sagely put it, a house divided cannot stand. I suspect that the GOP will have a "religious right" problem in the coming years. Some will believe the ends (three conservative, presumably anti-abortion Justices on the Supreme Court) will justify the means, and they will continue to support. Others will say "we got what we wanted, now I'm not going to vote." But regardless the Christian conservatives in this country will face an internal reckoning centered around the hypocrisy of supporting Donald Trump, a man who has very often stood in opposition to Christian principles. Or at least they should. 

3. Finally, the Trump Administration led to a third dividing line between the GOP of old and the new order: foreign policy. The coalition of Nixon, Reagan and both Presidents Bush was built on a strong, hawkish US foreign policy. We arm up, we demonstrate power globally, and we fight wars (early and often if possible). President Trump spun this on its' head, seeking to withdraw from international coalitions and agreements, ceding power and influence to China, Russia, and others, and looking to take the US to a more isolationist position**. Again, this is not without precedent (Wilson and FDR were isolationist ahead of the World Wars until they were not), but it is unprecedented in the modern (post WWII) era. What makes it particularly unprecedented is that, under President Trump, the GOP went from being uniformly dominated by hawks to housing portions more dovish than the vast majority of anti-interventionist Democrats. 

Taken in total, these three balancing acts (size of government and spending, conservative Christian values, and foreign policy) seem poised to drive the discussion in the build up to 2024, and the Republican primaries. Of course, the success, or lack thereof, of the Biden administration will play a huge role in the GOP nominating process, as will the outcome of the 2022 midterm elections. The Democrats managed to win the White House in 2020, lose seats in the House, and gain seats in the Senate; all told, it was an atypical election year.

Prognosticating this far out is a fraught exercise, but there is reason to believe that the Republicans may take back the House in 2022, while losing another seat or two in the Senate. Imagine, for a moment, that outcome, and couple it with another reasonable outcome: after the 2022 midterm election President Biden announces he will take the James K. Polk route and only serve a single term, declining to run for re-election. Vice President Harris becomes a leading candidate, but certainly not a shoe in (most likely). It is in that unique (albeit imaginary at this point) environment that the Republican Primary in 2024 may take place. 

So the Democrats would have the establishment (Harris would likely have a chance to clear this portion of the field unless the Administration is in disarray) face off against the far left (hard to tell this far out, but think AOC or someone of that type of stature). The Republicans, conversely, would have an interparty war between more establishment, traditional members (Ben Sasse, Nikki Haley probably, perhaps John Kasich or Larry Hogan), members trying to straddle the line between Trumpism and the traditional GOP (looking at you Mike Pence, but also Tom Cotton), and those who are fully trying to inherit the championship belt from Trump and declare Trumpism as the new GOP platform (Josh Hawley, maybe Ted Cruz, and yes, quite possibly a Trump - either the 45th President himself looking for a Cleveland like comeback, or Donald Trump Jr.). 

It's hard to say who has an advantage in that scenario this far out. At this moment it would seem that Ben Sasse, or those like him, have the inside track given how divided the GOP appears to be. Mike Pence seems to be damaged goods, but a book tour and time on cable news can repair some of that. Hawley and Cruz, to say nothing of the Trumps, seem on the verge of being ostracized at present, but that can swing around quickly to cult hero status. The reality is that the next two years will be crucial in this process. Who will have the largest voice in the minority government. Already, the battle lines are drawn: you're either with Trump (Jim Jordan) or you're the enemy and need to be stripped of all influence (Liz Cheney). Only a Sith deals in absolutes? Try telling that to Trump and his acolytes. The GOP has become a zero sum game all unto itself. I will be paying the closest attention to members who try to have it both ways. It is an unlikely gambit, fraught with pitfalls on both sides, but if a charismatic enough politician can simultaneously claim to be the heir to Reagan and Trump ... well, that person will be a strong candidate in 2024, regardless of what the Biden Administration does, regardless of who is running at the top of the Democratic ticket. The race to 2024 may have informally started, but it officially begins today. Hope you're ready. 

*The reigning champion for adding to the national debt remains FDR (and, with a nearly 1,050% increase - yes you read that right - FDR will likely never be topped). But After FDR (the Great Depression and WWII) and Woodrow Wilson (WWI) the next highest increases to the debt by percentage are Reagan (186%) and George W Bush (101%). Obama will stay ahead of Trump, but only due to having served two terms to Trump's one; at the end of one term the debt's growth under Trump exceeds the growth under Obama, who was dealing with the great recession at the time.

**This, in turn, has left the Biden Administration a far more dangerous North Korea and Iran, for example, than the Trump Administration was left by the Obama Administration. 

The Record on the Trump Presidency

 As the sun rises on January 18, 2021, we now find ourselves less than 48 hours from the end of the Trump Presidency. As such, it seemed like a good time to do a brief overview of what his administration accomplished over the last four years. Here, in my opinion, are ten things that were particularly noteworthy (not, necessarily, in any particular order). 

1. The Trump White House appointed more than 200 judges to the federal bench, nearly as many as President Obama did in two terms. While he appointed fewer than his three predecessors did in two terms, his impact will be most clearly felt in the 54 appellate court Judges appointed. It is not an exaggeration to say that President Trump restructured the federal judiciary in a single term. 
2. Of course, all of that would have been window dressing had he not accomplished a long time Republican goal of creating a conservative super majority on the Supreme Court. The politicization of the court was covert for years, became more overt with the failed nomination of Robert Bork, and fully flourished with the refusal to even vote on Merrick Garland. But for everything the Trump Administration did or did not accomplish for the GOP faithful, one thing that is indisputable is that McConnell's gambit with Garland's nomination not only paid off, but in spades when coupled with the retirement of Anthony Kennedy and the untimely death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Supreme Court Judge's judicial philosophies can be hard to pinpoint (see David Souter as example 1a). Chief Justice John Roberts, a conservative stalwart by most any objective analysis, has already taken on a ton of water for failing to be "conservative enough." Time will tell if Gorsuch has a similar approach to Chief Justice Roberts, or if Kavanaugh or Coney Barrett surprise by being more moderate than Justice's Thomas and Alito. But Trump's reworking of the court to move the center to the right of Chief Justice Roberts is an outcome that will be felt for a generation at least. That is a long lasting accomplishment. 
3. Donald Trump broke all the rules of diplomacy with North Korea, got some photos out of it, and leaves the USA with a far bigger problem than he inherited. North Korea has continued to invest in and advance not only their nuclear weapons program, but also their delivery systems. Turns out, there are reasons for "conventional wisdom" in cases like North Korea, and reasons why prior administrations, Democrat or Republican, approached the problem in fairly similar ways. You can't just go rogue with foreign policy and expect it to work out well.
4. To that end, the Trump administration's decision to withdraw from the Iranian Nuclear Deal was consequential, and also a complete disaster. Many of my Trump apologist friends and family like to point to the Iran agreement as a failure of the Obama Administration, without knowing anything about the complexities of nuclear non-proliferation or the difficulty of actually delivering a multi-national agreement like the Iranian Nuclear Deal. As far back as 2014 there were strong signs that the Iran deal was working; instead, now we are left with a rapidly advancing Iranian nuclear program, the USA with a damaged reputation for future negotiations, and increasing likelihood of conflict with Iran leading to some sort of war. Simply put, the Iranian Nuclear Deal was the best of a series of bad options the world was left with to contain the Iranian nuclear program; Trump's hatred of all things Obama, coupled with he and his team's lack of skill in international relations, have led the world far closer to the Iranians crossing the breakout threshold and creating their own nuclear arsenal. 
5. President Trump took office with a Republican majority in both the House and the Senate. He ran promising to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. He never could quite get the votes to repeal (insert John McCain thumbs down) and he never published anything remotely resembling a plan to replace. This talking point was a fraud on Republican votes; he never intended to replace the ACA with anything, just as President George W Bush campaigned openly in 2004 about an Amendment to the Constitution barring same sex marriage, but never intended to act on it. 
6. President Trump undoubtedly moved the party to the right, making it so that staunch conservatives like John Boehner, Paul Ryan, and Jeff Flake had to leave political office because they quickly became "Republicans In Name Only." You see the same thing happening right now with Liz Cheney. They eat their own, and the last four years have made that vibrantly clear. 
7. Under Trump there were tax cuts. He may not have been able to deliver repeal and replace, but his unified GOP government at least cut taxes. Of course, more than 60% of the savings went to the top 20% of income earners in the country, while corporations continued to find ways to dodge paying taxes. And the tax cuts didn't really impact economic growth. TL;DR? The rich got richer, the poor got poorer, the deficit got larger, and most of us didn't really see much change at all. 
8. President Trump may not have been able to do anything else of legislative consequence, but he did take unilateral action whenever and where ever he could. One area that will likely have long lasting impact was his decision to pull the US out of the Paris Climate Accord. Climate change is real, and it is an existential threat to not only the USA but every living being on this planet. I cannot believe that Republicans haven't found a way to make this into a winning issue; the economy of the future will be dominated by those who master clean energy. That said, this action was short sighted and, again, seemed mostly driven by not liking it simply because the prior administration did it. Similar to the attempted action with the ACA, and the action with the Iranian Nuclear Accords. As well as pulling out of NAFTA only to renegotiate an extremely similar deal. Seems like you might be able to say that President Trump didn't like his predecessor. 
9. Of course, on his watch the GOP also lost the 2018 midterm elections in historic fashion, and he became the first President since Benjamin Harrison (1888) to lose the popular vote twice. This may say something more broadly about the GOP coalition, however, as they have now lost the popular vote for the Presidency in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2020. 
10. Finally, President Trump became only the third President to be Impeached, in 2019, and then became the only President to be Impeached twice, in the waning days of his Administration. He is now the record holder; it is not uncommon for members of the House to submit Articles of Impeachment, but it is rare for there to actually be a hearing, for their to be a vote on it. Numerous times during the George W Bush administration there were rumblings of potential Impeachment, but it never came to pass. Trump managed to commit Impeachable offenses throughout his time in office, to the degree that he was actually Impeached twice. 

Certainly a history making four years. 

Will We Not Survive Ourselves?

 "We crossed the oceans wide, built cities to the sky oh lord. Looked up and we were flying. But will we not survive ourselves?" - Dave Matthew Band, Gaucho

This lyric stuck in my head over the last week as I read numerous think pieces regarding President Trump and his need to either A) resign the Presidency, B) have his powers removed by his Cabinet and Vice President via the 25th Amendment, or C) be Impeached and tried. I am not going to write thousands of words on this (although I could), but I did want to jump on to lay out a few points about why it is important to have a check on Presidential power, and the significant risk we find ourselves in as a country and civilization.

I suspect most people have never heard of James Schlesinger. He was the Secretary of Defense under President Nixon, a man who took an action that can simultaneously be celebrated and condemned - and neither side would be wrong. In 1974 President Nixon was nearing resignation, and was, by all accounts, not well mentally. He was drinking to excess, and scheming ways to stay in power. He was even reported to have joked about dropping a nuclear bomb on Capitol Hill as Congress moved to impeach him. This nuclear fantasy wasn't isolated; he also is reported to have made a point of saying "I can go into my office and pick up the telephone, and in 25 minutes 70 million people will be dead."  

Secretary Schlesinger helped to make that not possible, as he separated the nuclear codes from President Nixon, further insisting that any order to launch be cleared by him or National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger first. Many of the things that led to Secretary Schlesinger's unprecedented action in 1974 are present today: a damaged, mentally unwell President scheming for ways to stay in power, desperate and fearing for his own legal liability. Secretary Schlesinger acted in a way that could accurately be described as simultaneously patriotic and mutinous. He acted to save the world, while also undermining the chain of command to his Commander in Chief. This article, entitled "The Most Patriotic Act of Treason in American History" sums it up well, just in the title. (If you're interested in learning more about this period of time, including Nixon, the nuclear codes, and the relevance to this discussion today, check out this article.)

There is no doubt in my mind that President Trump hoped that the violent insurrection on January 6th, 2021 would lead to him staying in power. Foreign policy experts like Fiona Hill and Timothy Snyder have given detailed explanations about why this was, in fact, a coup attempt, and how Trump's actions closely align with failed dictators, but didn't deviate too far from those of successful dictators. I won't rehash their well researched, well reasoned articles here. I will strongly encourage you to read them for context to this entire discussion. Those who would say that President Trump didn't attempt a coup, didn't attempt to move us towards an authoritarian dictatorship, and didn't directly seek to undermine democracy in our country are simply lying: either to themselves, or to you. He did, and in that context, we need to revisit Secretary Schlesinger's actions in the context of 2021 and beyond. 

Joe Cirincione is one of the leading minds in the area of nuclear non-proliferation. His book, Deadly Arsenals: Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Threats was a key resources in my education in international relations. The book opens with this statement:

"The proliferation of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons is widely recognized as the most serious threat to the national security of the United States and other nations." 

In the 15 plus years since the second edition of this book was published, the only thing that I would add is that climate change has probably wedged itself in there on equal footing. That said, the nuclear age undoubtedly brought challenges, and we face those challenges still today. Cirincione is one of the most established and respected minds in foreign policy when it comes to nuclear non-proliferation, nuclear security/diplomacy, and weapons systems (including their realistic use and limitations). He writes for Responsible Statecraft these days, and it is his most recent article, from January 13, 2021, that I want to end by reflecting on. 

Cirincione opens by reflecting on Speaker Pelosi's concerns about President Trump, in his closing days, being unfit to have nuclear launch capability at his disposal. Of course, if you followed the news you know that Speaker Pelosi says she was assured by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Milley, that there were checks in place to stop the President from acting on any impulse to start a war (most likely, Cirincinoe correctly points out, with Iran; my concerns here could fill another post). Of course, if General Milley or any other military member ignored the President's direct order, they would be violating their chain of command, which would be mutiny.

Cirincione explains, in readily accessible detail, the reason that the system is set up as it is (for the President to be able to authorize a nuclear strike by himself without secondary approval). Cirincione also explains why that needs to change, and then suggests how to do it: 

"It must be at the top of Joe Biden's agenda to change the obsolete policies that make this nightmare scenario possible. One, end the first-strike policy so that any order to fire nuclear weapons first is illegal. Two, take weapons off high alert so that they cannot be launched in minutes, allowing more time for deliberation and reconsideration of launch orders. Three, end the sole authority of any president to start a nuclear way by requiring at the top what we require all the rest of the way down the launch chain: two must agree to launch." 

This makes good sense. If nuclear weapons are to be a meaningful deterrent (and I am of the mindset that they are), then we should make it clear they are a deterrent, not a first strike option. This would not limit our ability, as a nation, to defend ourselves, nor would it limit our ability to respond to nuclear aggression in kind. It would simply reduce the likelihood of a desperate or unwell politician at the top of the launch command making a mistake for which all of civilization will pay. 

Of particular note, Cirincione ends by explaining that many of these actions Biden can take immediately upon taking office, through executive orders. Other actions, such as treaties for arms reduction both alone and in concert with other nations, require Congressional approval. But it is long past time for us to stop celebrating what Secretary Schlesinger did, to stop putting our hope in what General Milley says he would do, and instead recognize that putting our military or civilian servants in the position of having to engage in a mutinous action to save the world is unacceptable. 

This week has shown that these actions are all the more important, given the extreme polarization in our country that makes it so A) the President won't resign because there isn't a critical mass of Republicans calling for it, B) the Cabinet and Vice President won't act because they see it as giving in to the other side, and C) the Senate might convict, or it might not, but they won't act quickly in any event. Our political polarization has led us to a moment where most Americans, and even most in Congress, are in agreement that the President is too unsafe to have a Twitter account, but we cannot act uniformly to remove him from the nuclear codes without banking on someone engaging in mutiny to do it. That's dumb policy, and it has to change. 

A Republic, If You Can Keep It

 It's been not quite four years since I last posted here. I started this blog as President Trump took office, with an opening post going live on January 22, 2017, two days after inauguration day. At that time, I laid out the reason I was starting this blog:

"I hope that this can become a part of a broader discussion, at least within my own small world, to enhance the nature of discourse and, in my own way, to help all get back on track. The future of our society very well may depend on it." 

The future of society line, of course, was related to the need for broader discussion and improved discourse in our society about politics. And so I started off trying to post twice weekly, focused on what was going on in the county, in politics, sharing my experience, education, and perspective. 

Nineteen posts. That's all the further I made it in this endeavor. Nineteen posts between January 22, 2017 and April 12, 2017. And then I stopped, and haven't come back until today. I can come up with lots of excuses, all of which have some degree of truth. I got busy. Life got complicated. I sincerely doubt the value that my perspective brings to the broader discourse, and there is a part of me that suspects that writing in any way, but particularly this way is little more than a one person ego trip. Instead I journaled, discussed with close friends, and thought a lot. But all of those things, and so many other things, are window dressing to the real reason that this blog got shuttered just shy of three months after I launched it. 

This is the real reason: I could not find a way to put the Presidency of Donald J. Trump into any context. I could not find a way to be "middle of the road" when taking an objective view of his actions, or many of the actions of those around him. Simply put, I found myself rapidly incapable of trying to bring any sense of logic to an illogical situation, and found myself increasingly frustrated by those who cheered the actions of the President. 

I noted, in that first introduction, that I wanted to own that I was not a Trump supporter, stating:

"I cannot imagine what it would have taken to get me to vote for the man ... I identify as a moderate Republican, lining up more as an independent these days than anything else." 

That said, I intended to try to put Trump's Presidency into a more balanced context, recognizing that the nature of our country at this time lent itself to extreme polarization. In that effort I quickly recognized I would fail, and therefore I retreated. I recognized I was unable to pretend that the President of the United States was anything other than a racist, sexist, wannabe strong man demagogue. And, with that reality I also recognized that I was unable to engage in discourse regarding this man in a productive way with broader society. It quickly became hard enough, and often impossible, to do so with my family and close friends who drank the Trump Kool aide. 

On January 6, 2021 the full Congress met to certify the Electoral College results. You don't need me to repeat all the talking points about this day that were offered up ahead of it: ceremonial, routine, usually gets no publicity at all, etc. The reality is that the Congressional certification of the Electoral College results is a non-story. But the reason you heard all these things ahead of this day was that everyone knew that some way, some how, this day would be different. There was a protest planned, and President Trump would be speaking at it. Nobody knew exactly what would happen, but anyone who had paid a lick of attention to the politics of President Trump since he became candidate Trump in 2015 knew that whatever happened would be unprecedented and it wouldn't be good. 

 President Trump spoke to the protestors after a warm up from his son (Donald Trump Jr.) and his personal lawyer (Rudy Giuliani), both of whom stoked the fires in their own way. He then took the podium and spewed the same dictator-lite fundamental lie he had been spewing since the GOP Primaries in 2016: any election in which he did not win was stolen, a hoax, and either needed to be redone or overturned. That is reality; his actions on January 6, 2021 were not fundamentally different than his response to losing the Iowa Caucus to Ted Cruz in 2016. It was always the same playbook, and it was taken from men like Putin, Un and Khamenei, who took it from men like Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini, who modified it from the well established plans to maintain power from Kings and Emperors of civilizations past. 

Please understand that this is historical fact when I tell you this: what Donald J. Trump attempted to do (and is, undoubtedly, still trying to find a way to do as I write this) is not new, unprecedented, or unheard of. It happens the world over every year, and has since the first forms of government. To be led by a strong-man dictator (whatever the title) is the most common form of government in human history. To be led by a democratically elected head of state who transfers power when they are voted out is extremely rare. 

There are many reasons for this, but perhaps the most compelling I've ever read is over two thousand years old. Plato, in his political philosophy classic Republic stated:

"There can be no doubt that the love of wealth and the spirit of moderation cannot exist together in citizens of the same State to any considerable extent; one or the other will be disregarded." 

Put another way, by Lord John Dalberg-Acton: 

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men..." 

These realities are part of what led to our Constitution's unique qualities of separation of powers, including the Executive Branch, the Congress and the Courts. Of course, some of our government is related to the second line of the Lord Acton quote. We have a government by the people, for the people, but we have an Electoral College because the Founding Fathers didn't trust the "common" man to vote for the President (or Senators for that matter). And, of course, the Founding Fathers had to create a system that worked within the context of "State's rights" which, at the time, was the context for the discussion on our nation's original sin, slavery. Benjamin Franklin acknowledged that the pursuit of a more perfect union was inherently flawed based on the men who led the pursuit, stating in his final speech at the Constitutional Convention that:

"...when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interest, and their selfish views."

All eligible voters have a voice in our democracy, but it is watered down and limited in very real ways. If I lived in Wyoming, I would have over three times the voting power in my single vote than the average American; if I lived in California, by contrast, my vote would be worth only .85 the average American. And, of course, ending this tangent, the Electoral College doesn't just do crazy things with vote value like that, it also ensures that out of our 50 states only a handful will "really matter" each year. In 2020, like 2016, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin were the big three with a few other states on the periphery. 

These last paragraphs were sidebars to the broader context of this post, and what I'm hoping to convey. If you aren't familiar with the title of this post, it comes from a quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin following the Constitutional Convention. Asked what kind of government the people had been given, Franklin is said to have replied:

"A republic, if you can keep it." 

Franklin is also reported to have said:

"Our new Constitution is now established, everything seems to promise it will be durable; but, in this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes." 

Our Constitution is facing one of the greatest threats it has since it was signed into the guiding law of the land. We, collectively, are the heirs and heiresses to a form of government that survived September 11, 2001, The Cold War and Vietnam, The Great Depression, two World Wars, the corruption of the Gilded Age, a Civil War and countless other challenges going all the way back to what was one of the first, and perhaps the greatest challenge: the peaceful transfer of power in the first contested election. We passed that challenge in 1796, as Washington stepped down and John Adams took his place. Four years later, with more drama, the Presidency passed peacefully from Adams to Thomas Jefferson. These two elections, 1976 and 1800, set the standard for our form of government. 

The 2016 election was the first since that had such a degree of uncertainty regarding the fundamental peaceful transfer of power. We were delayed four years in seeing what would happen if Donald J. Trump lost, because he won due to the Electoral College in 2016. What he has shown since election day 2020 cannot be a surprise to anyone who was paying attention since 2015. And still, surprising or not, it cuts to the very heart of what Franklin was warning against in the immediate aftermath of the Constitutional Convention, to the very core of what Plato and Lord Acton were saying. 

Human beings are terrible historians at large; we tend to live very much in the present, with limited awareness of the past and an inability to imagine a future different than today. Given that, it is unsurprising that so many of my fellow Americans would gleefully assume that our form of government will be tomorrow as it was yesterday. In the days, weeks and months to come there will be revisionist history about the events of this past week, past months, past years. We will hear about all the good that came from the Trump Presidency (read: lower taxes for the wealthy, booming 401Ks, and I'm sure some other things that I can't even wrap my head around enough to type them). We will hear that all he wanted was to ensure the election was fair, that it wasn't his supporters who stormed the Capitol and attempted to violently overthrow the very Constitutional Government that President Trump took an oath to protect. We will hear hairbrained theories that it was actually far left radicals who did the storming, in spite of a clear lack of evidence for it. We will hear more about how there were voting irregularities in the 2020 election, in spite of the absolute lack of evidence of any wide spread, abnormal irregularities. We are already hearing that anyone who would suggest that President Trump should be removed from office, Impeached and found guilty of treason, and barred from future office isn't trying to unify the country, and is therefore in the wrong. The spin, my friends, goes on. 

And yes, I ramble, but I ramble towards a broader point: our American Government and way of life is not something that is just "given." It must be fought for, and not in the military sense. It must be fought for and protected day in and day out by a citizenry that educates itself, engages in active discourse, and seeks to find the centrist truth rather than being wooed by the seductive extremes. It must be fought for by placing the wellbeing of others ahead of the absolute pursuit of personal wealth and power. It must be fought for by recognizing demagoguery on any side of the aisle and seeking to strike it down through emphatic use of the vote. It must be fought for by ensuring that everyone with the right to vote is clear about how to exercise that right, should they so choose, and that they are supported in doing so if they desire. It must be fought for by speaking truth to power as clearly and plainly as possible.

And so, at the end of this post, here is my truth to power:

• Donald J. Trump is a racist, sexist, power hungry fear monger. He is a con-man, a snake oil salesman, and a demagogue who fancies himself a strong man. Thank God (and I mean that literally) that he was not more gifted as a politician, or our way of Government would likely have ended. As it was, he managed to put it on life support. 
• President Trump, however, is not the cause of our problems; he is simply the most vibrant symptom. He is the worst of all of us, the manifestation of the poison we have let seep into our nation through cable news, social media, and other platforms that divide us rather than unite us. 
• Those who marched on and broke into the Capitol are domestic terrorists. There is no other way to put it, and all should be tried for whatever is viable to the fullest extent of the law. 
• President Trump, himself, was the leader of this movement. He should be barred from seeking future office by an overwhelming bipartisan majority of both houses of Congress. Anyone who doesn't support that effort clearly is valuing their own power more than the viability of the form of government they swore an oath to protect and uphold. 
• Further, President Trump should not receive any pardon for his actions; he must be tried and held accountable to the fullest extent of the law. Absent this, we simply leave the door open with a huge sign saying "please try again" to a more gifted politician who won't be a wanna be strong man because he'll achieve Trump's goal. 
• The Senators and House Members who pushed the façade should be censured, and be held to answer for their actions, particularly those who insisted on carrying on after the assault on the Capitol. In an ideal world, they would be dealt with the same as the Senators who refused to acknowledge the Presidency of Abraham Lincoln. 
• Anyone still supporting this man is either blind to the facts and willfully ignorant or, worse, is the type of person who encourages white supremacy, marginalizing others because of their race, ethnicity or gender, and is okay watching the world burn so long as they believe they'll come out ahead. 

It is on this last point that I will expound for a moment, and then end. I stopped writing because I realized I could not find the words to engage with those I most needed to: Trump supporters who were not horrified by what we had witnessed in his first 100 days in office. Logic was seemingly incapable of entering discussion with them, and I found my heart hardening towards them. At the end of 2019, in deep personal reflection, I realized that I needed to find a way to do better. 2020, instead, threw a ton of other things my way that took my time and attention, and my personal pursuit of becoming a better human being fell largely by the wayside, with the focus on the very real problems of today. 

Today I listened to a sermon that really drove the point home: we cannot hope to defeat bad with bad. We must rise above and fight evil with good. To be clear, the Trump supporters who stormed the capital must be tried, and the laws of this land must be upheld vibrantly to guard against future attempts of overthrowing the government. There will be more in the future, and we must guard strongly against it. But most of the 75,000,000 people who voted for President Trump were not there on January 6, 2021. Many of them, perhaps most, are not driven by harming or marginalizing others. They are driven by fear, and fueled by misinformation which is far easier to come by than well vetted fact. The world around them is changing, and they fear the loss that comes with change. Loss of power, loss of certainty, loss of understanding the world around them. Fear is powerful; President Trump knows this, which is why he led with fear early, often, and throughout his time as a candidate and in office. I believe that most of his supporters are afraid, and they let their fear blind them to reality.

It is these individuals that we all must find a way to engage with. We must find a way to come back towards the rational, reasoned, educated middle. I am still, as I was when I started this blog in January of 2017, a moderate, centrist, political being. If I cannot engage effectively with my brothers and sisters to the right of me, so be it. But I need to seek to understand their point of view, and try, as best I am able, to engage with them, and with those to the left of me in the same way. I like to believe that there is a large majority in this country, 80% or so of us, who can come to rational agreements on things like healthcare, energy policy, gun regulations and rights, voting rights ... the list goes on and on. 

Certainly, my discussions with friends and family on these issues tend to support this idea, but if it is true then clearly our representation in Washington is driven by and drives towards the 20% fringes. The only way to get our government to truly be by the people and for the people will be for us to start talking again, and to stop allowing fear to divide us. I hope and pray that out of the ashes of the last four years, from this flirtation with authoritarian government, we might close that door and instead march together towards a better, more democratic future. Our American way of life is only ours if we can keep it. History says we cannot succeed in this effort; only time will tell if we can overcome the pull of greed and fear and leave Trump the aberration, or if his Presidency was merely the prelude.