Author: Bruce R. Nelson

AN IMPORTANT LESSON LURKING AMONG THE RUBBLE ON FACEBOOK

I found something pretty incredible on Facebook the other day. It was hidden in the clutter of proclamations, declarations and protestations that dot our daily dose of social media cognition. It was unaccompanied by bold headlines and offered no sharp-edged sarcastic graphics. In plain, quiet 12-point type, the words almost seem to whisper. This is what they said:

“Just a thought but today, once again, I was reminded to use caution (when) speaking with family, friends and relatives. Those words might be the last thing that you ever have a chance to say to them. If you truly care, be careful. Sometimes hurt feelings become anger. Choose wisely.”

The message was written by a guy I barely know, someone I went to high school with 50 years ago. I can’t precisely place him, although I have a vague recollection of the two of us shooting spitballs in study hall. Now I am marveling at the wisdom and well-timed relevancy of his advice.

We’ve all been locked into this bizarre, and seemingly endless, political passion play for the last 18 months. Who among us has never chosen unwisely, never treaded or trampled on the feelings of those who don’t share our world view? The instantaneousness of social media is not always compatible with audience analysis and wise choices. Much has been written about how the presidential campaign, and its ongoing aftermath, have strained and destroyed close personal relationships (here, here and here). The New York Times just released a compelling video involving three parent-adult child dyads grappling with the Trump-Anti Trump dichotomy and the toll it took on their relationships. We’ve all gotten so caught up in preaching the righteousness of our beliefs that we needlessly and unintentionally hurt those who see the world differently.

I was so taken with my classmate’s advice, that I went to his homepage to see what other pearls of wisdom David had to offer. I am using only his first name here out of respect for his privacy, since he didn’t sign up to share his comments with my 300,000 blog readers. (Readership estimates calculated by Sean Spicer and Associates.) David heaped praise on the Republican/conservative control of all three branches of government and was critical of former President Obama for “forcing his extreme far-left agenda on an unwilling country by executive orders, left wing judges, and obsequious bureaucrats.”

As a far-left true believer, I disagreed with the content of virtually all of David’s political writings. Yet, there was something refreshingly nostalgic in the tone of his messages. He stuck to the subject matter, to the issue at hand, and never threw daggers or venom-laced sarcasm at those who might hold contrary views. I found it utterly refreshing. It was a throwback to our high school days.

I was on the debate team then. We learned how to argue both sides of an issue, a process that instilled a tremendous respect for differences of opinion. I covered the Minnesota Legislature in the 1970s, back when politicians treated each other with respect and civility, fighting over ideas without assassinating each other’s character. All of that now seems as outdated as rotary telephones and Smith Corona typewriters. We seem to have lost the ability to disagree without being disagreeable.

I live in a 55-and-up community where we all smile and wave at each other. The friendliness, however, morphs into cut-throat vindictiveness as soon as the neighborhood list serve detects a whiff of political thought. This week’s “nana na nana” exchange was over who was more obnoxious, Madonna or Donald Trump? The monitor had to shut it down and remind us to avoid political discussions. Here we are, a bunch of geezers in the twilight of our lives, and we can’t carry on a political discussion without sounding like professional wrestlers.

Remember the old “Saturday Night Live” riff on Point/Counterpoint? Dan Akroyd always started his counter to Jane Curtin’s opening argument with, “Jane, you ignorant slut!” It was a funny exaggeration back then. Now it’s standard procedure. I finally went cold turkey on the nightly cable news talk shows because I couldn’t take the shouting, the interruptions and the caustic sarcasm. Then come those daily email solicitations from political groups, all using what Andrés Martinez, an Arizona State University professor, calls “dystopian depictions” of the opposition. Martinez astutely notes that people are more inclined to push a button and donate $20 if they think they are helping to fight evil incarnate, as opposed to a reasonable person with whom we disagree.

Polarization clearly wins for cable programming and internet fundraising. But it also seeps into our psyche where it does absolutely nothing for our humanity. One of David’s political posts defended Trump’s bankruptcy filings on the basis that they were nothing more than a successful business strategy. From the left, there are obviously a number of rational and legitimate retorts that could have been offered. Instead, an alleged liberal, posted this rebuttal: “So a success? Fuck no, and it takes a brainwashed piece of shit idiot to even pretend it’s so. Know what’s good though? You’re old, and will be dead soon. And the world will be better off.”

The angry, young author of that comment deserves to be hit with a speeding spitball. The truth is that the world will be better off when there are more people like David in it, people who stand up for their beliefs without denigrating those who believe something else.

THE ILLUSIVE SEARCH FOR TRUTH IN A TRUMP WHITE HOUSE

We’re not even 100 hours into the Trump presidency and he has uttered a string of foolish, sophomoric lies on mostly trivial subjects, ones that, oddly and pathologically, matter only to him. In other words, whoever had January 21 or 22 in the pool on when this guy would start acting presidential lost. And the rest of the month is not looking any more promising.

Among this weekend’s presidential proclamations:

• There were 1.5 million people at his inauguration, the largest inaugural crowd ever. There were actually about 250,000 people there, dwarfing the 2009 Obama inauguration which drew 1.8 million. The new president’s fabrication became an instant meme; even the Jumbotron at a Dallas hockey game got into the act by flashing, “Tonight’s Attendance: 1.5 Million!”
• After a few rain drops fell at the start of his speech, President Trump said “God looked down and he said we’re not going to let it rain on your speech. The truth is it stopped immediately.” (This was, by the way, the first recorded report of God ever referring to Himself with a plural pronoun.) According to the Washington Post and the National Weather Service, the rain continued during the first several minutes of Trump’s speech.
• The President reported that as soon as he finished his speech, there was a pounding downpour. That simply did not happen according to weather authorities.
• President Trump told career intelligence staffers at the Central Intelligence Agency Saturday that the news media totally fabricated a report that he had been critical of their work. Days earlier, Trump’s own tweets had compared CIA employees to Nazis and made fun of them for having been wrong about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

This singularly bizarre presidential behavior on Trump’s part should come as no surprise, although it will for anyone who held out hope that, somehow, the oath of office would transform him from a narcissistic combatant into a more serious statesperson. After all, against all odds and predictions, Trump now holds the most important job in the free world. Why is he still acting like an insecure adolescent, obsessed with constantly proving himself? The answer would fill a PhD dissertation, and I’m sure several are already in progress.

Unfortunately, unless his staff finds a way of reigning him in, – and prospects for that are extremely low – we will have to adjust to a new normal: a president totally lacking in basic leadership skills. Google the subject and you will immediately find thousands of treatises on the necessity of leaders establishing credibility and being selective in picking their battles (here, here and here). That is foreign terrain to our new president. The size of the inauguration crowd does not matter one iota. If 12 people or 12 million people had showed up, his presidential powers remain the same. Spending the first 50 hours of his presidency in a urination contest over crowd sizes and weather reports makes no strategic sense, particularly when the news media has hard evidence of his falsehoods.

The problem, of course, goes well beyond the immediate issue of crowd counts and weather patterns. What happens when the president’s words really matter? What if he’s talking about the number of American casualties in battle? Or the substance of a trade agreement? Or how many people are without health insurance? Trump’s disregard for the truth is pathological, meaning he lies constantly, whether he needs to or not. The New York Times reported a story from Trump butler Anthony Senecal, who said the president once told someone that the nursery tiles at Mar-a-Lago were made by Walt Disney. Senecal told Trump that was not true. His boss’ response? “Who cares?”

Daniel Gilbert, a Harvard University psychologist, wrote a fascinating book explaining the cognitive process that causes some people to, in effect, create a false reality and believe it is true. In his book, “Stumbling on Happiness,” Gilbert laid out such a thought process. A person knowingly exaggerates an observation to match a fantasy or an expectation. Most people, he said, then differentiate between the fantasy and the actual situation. But some, Gilbert writes, repeat the exaggeration so often that they come to believe it.

Mix that scenario with what Trump, in his autobiography, “The Art of the Deal,” called “truthful hyperbole,” and you have a recipe for converting the imagination into reality. Here is what Trump wrote in that book: “People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration—and a very effective form of promotion.” 

Its innocence, however, quickly dissipates when you lose the ability to distinguish reality from fantasy, particularly when your job description includes access to the nuclear codes. Hang onto your seats. This is going to be a long, bumpy ride.

PUSSIES, POETRY AND A BLANK FROM THE PAST

There is a fascinating fracas in the heartland. It’s stirring the nostalgic juices of all of us ink-stained geezers, who periodically look up from our laptops and long for that rancid smell of crusty old newsrooms, complete with pica poles, glue pots and hungover editors in green shaded visors, an unfiltered cigarette hanging from their lips. From a production standpoint, today’s journalism is barely recognizable to anyone who got their first byline in the ‘60s or ‘70s. The printed page is on a death watch. Digital rules. Video trumps words. Content is designed for a smart phone screen. Nobody yells “Stop the presses!” anymore.

But just when you’ve accepted the fact that this vintage newspaper culture is confined to “The Front Page”, now in a limited Broadway engagement starring Nathan Lane, along comes a throwback to the days of old. It brought back so many memories, only 37 years of twelve-stepping kept me from reaching for a back-pocket flask to toast the moment.

This wonderful oldie-but-goodie appeared in a recent Minneapolis Star-Tribune story about the censorship of a poem titled “A Prayer for P–––––s.” That is exactly the way the newspaper identified the title. Millennials reading that story may have thought it was a word game. The censored poem’s title was a Prayer for a seven letter word starting with “p” and ending with “s”. Hmm. Prayer for Papists? Prayer for Pasties? How about, with apologies to those with allergies, Prayer for Peanuts? No? Then, maybe Prayer for Piggies, Pouters, Psychos or Pushers? Or even Prayer for Pundits, Punters, Pygmies or Phonics?

Of course, those of us old enough to remember the golden days of print journalism knew in a nostalgic instant that the alliterated prayer could only be for. . . drumroll please. . .ready? PUSSIES! The censored poem was “A Prayer for Pussies.” The blanks were a throwback to an era when newspapers strove to protect pure and innocent eyes. Newsrooms were odd places back then. Profanities, dirty words and foul language were part of the constant banter, but there was a sacredness about the printed word and editors made sure that the bad ones never ended up in their paper. Granted, it was news when a senator told a colleague to perform an anatomically challenging act on himself. In print, it came out as “Go f––k yourself.”

Enough of memory lane, let’s get back to pussies. A well-known Minnesota writer and artist, Junauda Petrus, was commissioned by the City of Minneapolis to write a poem to be encircled around one of 12 globe-shaped metal lanterns as part of the redesign of a downtown mall. Seizing on the uniqueness of this political moment, Petrus converted the presidential campaign’s infamous Donald Trump-Billy Bush exchange into an artfully crafted ode to the power of womanhood. She called it “A Prayer for Pussies,” figuring that a country that just elected a president who boasted about grabbing them couldn’t possibly object to praying for them.

Alas, she was wrong. Minneapolis officials decided that, as progressive as their city might be, hanging a “Prayer for Pussies” lantern in front of Macy’s Department Store might be pushing the envelope just a tad. Petrus’ poem was rejected and the resulting censorship flap was the entire basis for the Star-Tribune story. Unfortunately for readers, the piece looked like a Wheel of Fortune game board, waiting for Vanna White to start turning letters. The reporter did a solid job of telling both sides, but the nostalgic ‘60s edits were tantamount to an endorsement of the city’s censorship decision. Take a look, for example, at this otherwise pithy quote from the poet, comparing her art to Trump’s, eh, “locker room” behavior: “If he can feel bold to not only say the word ‘p––––,’ but make it a philosophy to grab for women, I can fricking write a poem that is adding sacredness and having love around the idea of praying for p–––––s.”

It’s 2017, people. The word pussy isn’t going to hurt anyone. A news story based entirely on a controversy over the use of a word needs to spell it out. Without blanks. Still, the flap was amusing and it took me back to my very early years as a reporter on a small town newspaper. During a heated council meeting, a colorful local mayor called the police chief a “goddamn suck hole.” The chief sued the mayor for slander. After lengthy litigation, a judge dismissed the suit on the basis that the term “goddamn suck hole” was so lacking in substantive meaning that it could not rise to the level of slander because nobody knew what it was.

Through it all, the newspaper referred to the alleged slanderous term as “g–––––n s––– h–––.” Many readers actually cut the articles out of the paper, filled in the blanks and mailed them in. Most of them got it wrong. The top vote getter was “goddamn shit head,” which, had it been uttered by the mayor, would have presented the court a more difficult set of facts. Other readers, baffled by all the blanks, called the newspaper and demanded to know the censored term. As a result, a young newsroom receptionist sat for weeks at her desk, telephone in hand, repeating over and over, “goddamn suck hole.” It was a strange ethical system: you could say it, but you couldn’t print it, even though a judge found that it had no meaning.

Of course, we now have an even stranger ethical system. For the next four years, the band will be playing Hail to the Chief for a man who grabs women by their pussies, while a poet who wants to pray for them is forever banned. As we used to say back in the day, that is really f––––d up.

POST ELECTION BLUES? YOU’LL FIND NO ESCAPE IN FLORIDA

Having just returned from a protracted stay in Florida, I’m still trying to untangle the state’s incongruous dualism. There is nothing more radiant than ocean waves glistening under a January sun. Yet, you don’t have to venture far from the beach to find a sea of tacky souvenir shops offering, in almost parody fashion, blow-up sea urchins and plastic alligator heads that glow in the dark. They can be ignored if you try hard enough, focusing instead on the elegant palm trees and luscious greenery adorning Florida’s highways and byways. Then again, such aesthetic vegetation is interspersed with gigantic billboards, split evenly between adult sex shops and personal injury lawyers. Florida folks are pragmatic. If a marital aid breaks at an inopportune time, they know who to call for punitive damages.

And then there’s politics. Florida and its 29 electoral votes have long been the southern belle of presidential elections, drawing more attention than any state below the Mason-Dixon line, and most of them above it. Its hanging chads took center stage in the 2000 legal battle that ended with the U.S. Supreme Court decision handing the presidency to George W. Bush. President Obama carried the state in 2008 and 2012. Two of the supporting actors in last year’s Republican primary drama – Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio – are Floridians. But Donald Trump beat them both and went on to capture the state’s electoral prize in November. With that sometimes-you-win-and-sometimes-you-lose background, you’d think Florida voters would be in a Que Sera, Sera kind of place over the pending Trump inauguration.

That’s decidedly not the case. The most dramatic evidence of the deep personal tension felt by many Floridian liberals came in an unlikely venue. Micanopy is a small, beautifully peaceful, antediluvian town a few miles south of Gainesville. Its main drag is filled with shops selling crafts, antiques and home furnishings. We spent an hour in one of those stores and drew an occasional glance from the owner, who undoubtedly marked us as out-of-towners. She approached us after the other customers had left and asked where we were from. Upon learning that we lived a few miles outside of Washington, D.C., she withdrew into a brief and pensive silence. After mentally calculating the political demographics, she took a chance.

“I just don’t know what to do,” she told us. “This whole thing with Trump. I’ve never been so scared.” My wife, Melissa, and I nodded and smiled, much to the store owner’s relief.
“Oh, thank God,” she said, “I figured you were safe. You just never know. So many customers are for Trump. It’s just awful. I can’t let on and I don’t even want to talk to them. I’ve never been through anything like this. My candidates have lost in the past and life goes on. But this time is different. I am scared of this guy. Some of his supporters scare me even more. The day after the election, I thought I would close the shop and sell the business so I wouldn’t have to deal with them. But it’s been my life. I don’t know what to do.”

It’s not just a Florida thing. New York City is offering employees counseling services and other support for dealing with Trump’s election. Therapists throughout the nation have reported an overwhelming caseload of patients needing help with their anxiety and depression over the incoming Trump administration. Staffers at the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline say they have been swamped with calls from people in deep distress with feelings of hopelessness and betrayal over the election.

It’s a safe bet that this level of angst has to do with more than differences of opinion over tax policy or climate change. By campaigning against what he called “political correctness,” Trump, intentionally or unintentionally, validated the misogyny, racism and homophobia that progressives have been fighting for decades. For people affected by identity politics, this is deeply personal.

A man who sexually assaulted women and made disparaging comments based on race, religion and nationality will become president of the United States by the end of the week. A bully who delights in punching below his weight and demeaning anyone who gets in his way will soon be the leader of the free world.

Those of us who are bothered by our new reality have been counseled by Trump voters to “get over it and move on.” They are half right. We will never – and should never – get over the fact that our new president is the antithesis of the character and values we struggled to instill in our children: kindness, inclusiveness, fairness, decency and honesty. He is who he is. We need to accept that and move on. As of 12:01 p.m. Friday, we’re playing for keeps. It’s no longer about obnoxious early-morning tweets or a Fox news soundbite. Now it’s about policies and programs, legislation and executive orders. We who believe that America’s greatness lies in its diversity, including all of those struggling in the shadows, need to focus on keeping our dream alive.

Yes, this week’s inauguration represents one of the finest attributes of America’s unique democracy: the peaceful transfer of power based on the will of the electorate. Yet, another equally powerful piece of our system is one that allows citizens to rise up in agitation and peaceful protest when leaders betray the values and principles that made our country great. That’s why Saturday’s Women’s March on Washington is just as important to this inauguration as Friday’s swearing in.

Although our candidate lost, her campaign theme continues to thrive. Starting with Saturday’s march, and continuing every day for the next four years, we are, indeed, Stronger Together.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Thanks to the kindness of readers, my year ends on a rich and rewarding note. This is my 45th blog post since I stumbled into this bizarre post-retirement avocation in late August. As those who’ve been with me from the start know, my use of the word “stumbled” is not figurative. I fell, broke two ribs and, presto: there I was, memorizing WordPress code. Okay, the chain reaction wasn’t quite that immediate. I saw a doctor first. Then, to take my mind off the pain, I turned to Facebook with frequent pontifications, some of them undoubtedly enhanced by prescription drugs. They were all too long and ponderous in a medium built for brevity. Friends suggested that a blog might be a better venue.

And here I am, ending the year with my 45th post, just as the nation prepares to open a new year that will usher in its 45th president. The only difference between the two 45ths is that mine does not involve nuclear weapons. Still, in the interest of numerology, I am more than ready and eager to swiftly move on to Post Number 46.

You can count on that happening well in advance of President 45’s inauguration. Meanwhile, I am taking a bit of a break. I realize that the notion of a retiree going on vacation is an adventure in redundancy. The person who really needs the rest and relaxation is Melissa, my copy editor and wife. She spent another grueling year trying to improve the lot of news industry workers as their union’s ( The NewsGuild) collective bargaining director. As if that were not enough of a challenge, she also nursed me through another medical odyssey and fly specked my prose in this space. So, as the Trumpian crowd filters into town in advance of the inaugural festivities, we thought it would be the perfect time to escape to St. Augustine, Florida for a couple of weeks. Melissa deserves the break. I’m just along for the ride.

That means, absent a sudden rush of profundity that just can’t be held back, this space will be dark until sometime after January 13. With the addition of wishing all of you a very Happy New Year, that closes out my 45th blog post. If only the 45th presidency could be just as short and sweet!

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. Sunday is Christmas Day. Including the one in the following Clause (holiday pun intended), I have now used the word “Christmas” three times in this paragraph. I will hit number four in two more sentences. I believe that should establish my conservative bonafides, maybe even land me a gig on right wing talk radio. Trust me, this will not be a rant about Merry Christmas versus Happy Holidays, our culture’s ideological litmus test for distinguishing between left and right, pluralism and solipsism, inclusion and claims of political correctness. Those pieces of commentary are as abundant as fruitcakes right now and there is nothing new to say. However, if you have not read enough on this subject, I highly recommend E.J. Dionne’s insightful rant in yesterday’s Washington Post.

I want to take this discussion to another level. Why is it that those of us who embrace Christmas, either through faith or inertia, make such a big deal out of it? And it is a big deal, involving weeks of planning and preparation and consternation. This not to undervalue Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Three Kings Day, St. Lucia Day, the Solstice or any of the other seasonal offerings. On the contrary, they strike me as models of temperate celebration. Christmas is a holiday on steroids.

Many therapists use an intake tool to measure a new patient’s stress level. It assigns points for various traumatic life events experienced within the past year, like death of a parent, divorce, moving, loss of a job and Christmas. Yes, Christmas, the only holiday that comes with stress points. Google “Christmas depression” and you will find 46.4 million entries. Substitute the other holidays for Christmas and you end up with a mere fraction of hits. “Solstice depression,” for example, has only 576,000 offerings and most of them involve Seasonal Affective Disorder, depression from lack of sunlight. Christmas, on the other hand, offers up resources like: “A Depressive’s Guide to Christmas,” “Understanding & Coping with the Christmas Blues,” and “Five Doctor-Approved Tips for Overcoming Christmas Depression.”

Most of those pieces tell the same story: Our expectations for creating perfect moments of euphoric joy and connectedness over a two-or-three-day period are grossly unrealistic and, to one extent or another, destined to fall short. The massive lead-up to Christmas, which seems to start in earnest around Halloween, pulls on our fragile and edited memories of Christmases Past, laced with Norman Rockwellian images and a longing for deep familial bliss. Someone once described this delicate pot of emotions as “being homesick for a place we’ve never been.”

While we ponder, as Mary did, all of these things in our hearts, we return to earth with a jolt on or about December 25. That’s when the whole family gathers and Uncle Ed is drunk again and Cousin Rodney appears in a Trump cap with antlers and Bernie-supporting Niece Glenda pastes a “White Nationalist” sign on Rodney’s back and takes a swig from Ed’s bottle. That’s decidedly not what Norman Rockwell painted. Of course, he, too, was wistfully imagining a place he had never been, having suffered from depression most of his life.

Still, Christmas, even its secular version – with all the negatives attached – is well worth embracing, at least for those who chose to embrace it. Yes, we spend too much, buy too much, give too much. But the ritual pushes us to think of others, to give something to the people who matter in our lives, from family members, to coworkers, to the guy who, in the final days of print journalism, has our newspaper at our door by 6:30 a.m. every day. Donations for the poor skyrocket this time of year because we empathize more than ever with those in need. There is value in caring, even if it’s seasonal. The shrinks are right about tapping down expectations. Even a holiday as potent as Christmas is not going to suddenly and fundamentally alter human nature. What it does is remind us, in a big way once a year, that the essence of life lies more in kindness, love and human connection than in all of those other supposedly important things we throw ourselves into for the other 11 months of the year.

Many years ago, when I was working as a labor union rep, I found a greeting card that poignantly captured this Christmas duality of bliss and lack of permanence. I was so enamored with its raw honesty that I bought several boxes of them. They went, tongue in check, to a select audience of management negotiators I wrestled with over the years. The front bore an idyllic Thomas Kinkade-like scene of snow falling on a gigantic decorated Christmas tree with cherubic ice-skating carolers in the foreground. At the top was this greeting: “This Is A Season of Peace, Love and Understanding!” On the inside came the footnote: “But at 12:01 a.m. on December 26, it’s back to fuck you Charlie.”

In contract negotiations, as in life, you can’t always get a full loaf. Better to capture as many slices as possible than to end up with an empty plate. With that sage advice, I wish those who observe Christmas a very merry one, indeed. To my Jewish friends, Happy Hanukkah. To everyone else, may your special days and celebration bring you joy and happiness. Thank you all for enhancing my life by reading these words every once in a while.

LET’S GUARANTEE AN ANNUAL INCOME FOR EVERY AMERICAN

Here is a radical notion that deserves serious attention: guarantee every adult citizen an annual income for life. This socialist-sounding plan has not exactly received a Palm Sunday reception from the mainstream political class. There are encouraging signs, however, that it will eventually reach the table of public policy, as soon as we admit that there is no magic bullet of a jobs program that will cure the cancer of income disparity.

As noted here earlier this week, our country’s employment problem is chronic and structural. It’s not about a lack of jobs; it’s about jobs that don’t pay enough to support the middle class. That’s why, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, nearly half of recent college graduates are underemployed in jobs not requiring a degree and not paying much above minimum wage. A jobs program will do little to resolve this dilemma. Technology now allows companies to produce products and services with far fewer workers than in the past. Since capitalism is all about maximizing return on investment, this trend is not only unstoppable, it’s growth is a certainty.

The basic concept of a guaranteed annual income, or GAI, is simple. People would get a monthly allotment from the federal government, just like Social Security except that the payments start at 21 instead of 62. Like any public policy, the meat and the meaning of the program lie in the details. For example, some conservatives, including the American Enterprise Institute’s Charles Murray, have proposed replacing entitlements like Social Security and Medicare with a GAI starting on a citizen’s 21st birthday. Murray’s proposal, recently laid out in the Wall Street Journal, would give everyone $13,000 a year. They could earn up to $30,000 annually without a reduction in their GAI payments. That benefit would then be incrementally reduced until it reached $6,500 a year at the point of someone having an annual pay rate of $60,000 or more. Murray’s scheme would also eliminate every current social welfare program, including food stamps, housing subsidies and Medicaid, in exchange for lifetime cash payments.

As you might have guessed, the math of Murray’s plan is not all that progressive. The trade-off for a GAI, namely the elimination of every entitlement and welfare program, is a net loss for the middle class. A good counterproposal from the left might be to keep all current programs in place and give everyone making less than $60,000 a year an annual payment of, say, $30,000. And then look for middle ground. The significance of Murry’s piece in the Journal is that a leading thinker on the right acknowledged a truth still denied by most elected leaders, namely that our world has changed so much because of technology that we can no longer cling to the work ethic that has driven economic thought for the past 200 years. Wrote Murray, ”. . .it will need to be possible, within a few decades, for a life well lived in the U.S. not to involve a job as traditionally defined.”

That is precisely the lens we need to be looking through in search of a long-term solution to our employment problem. The concept of a GAI is not new. It was a popular issue in the early 1970s, supported by Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern and, to a limited extent the guy who beat him, Richard Nixon. The hurdle it could never clear was that such payments would be an incentive not to work and, therefore, an impairment to the country’s productivity. We are in a different place now. Productivity can be achieved by robots and software programs. Why not raise taxes on the billionaire investors profiting from this new paradigm and return a dividend of sorts in the form of a GAI to the folks adversely impacted by the change?

As radical as it may sound, it is not terribly different in form or substance from the ad hoc corporate socialism doled out under our current system. Existing federal welfare payments are making it possible for large corporations to employ low wage workers with no benefits. In just one example, identified by Forbes, Walmart employees receive $6.2 billion a year in federal public assistance through food stamps, Medicaid and subsidized housing. This is precisely the same policy transaction incorporated in the GAI; low-paid workers subsidized through federal funds. It’s a win for the worker, the employer and the economy.

It’s also the same concept used by Donald Trump and Mike Pence in persuading Indiana’s Carrier Corporation not to move 800 jobs to Mexico. In exchange for keeping those jobs in Indiana, Carrier got $7 million in tax credits and other incentives, another form of a government employment subsidy, and quite an expensive one at that. The epilogue of that story, by the way, shows how badly we need a comprehensive solution to this problem. Part of the agreement was that Carrier would invest another $16 million in its Indiana plant, supposedly earnest money showing its commitment to American jobs. A few days ago, company executives said a portion of that investment will be used to automate the plant so that more jobs can be eliminated.

Structural problems need structural solutions, not sloppy patchwork fixes. It’s time for policy makers to accept the fact that employment alone is no longer a sufficient engine to drive our economy. It’s also time for all of us to rethink just what it means to lead a good life, recognizing that self-worth is not tied to a paycheck. The most direct route to that destination is a guaranteed annual income.

THE EMPLOYMENT PROBLEM: IT’S ABOUT THE PAY, NOT THE NUMBER OF JOBS

My New Year’s wish for serious policy makers is that they abandon the illusion that the economic problems of the middle class can be fixed by the right jobs program. The simple truth is that technology has wiped out millions of good-paying jobs, and millions more are on the chopping block. Most are not coming back, and those that do will be at a much lower pay rate. The result has been a severe widening of the income gap between workers and investors, between capital and labor. In the space that follows, I will outline the current employment problem and show how it resulted from deep structural economic changes, as opposed to cyclical alterations that might well be modified by a federal job creation effort. Later this week, I will take up the matter of what to do about it.

Our elected leaders are still in deep denial over the seismic structural shift that has profoundly altered the nature of employment in this country. In their view, the job market took a severe jolt from the 2008 recession and a couple bad trade agreements. They see that unemployment is down now and pretend that everything will be fine once we bring those lost jobs back to our shores. As hopeful as the premise is, there is absolutely no evidence to support it.

The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that manufacturing output is now close to the prerecession level, but 1.5 million factory jobs appear to be lost for good. Compounding the problem is the fact that a large number of the jobs that did come back pay significantly less than they once did. As the Journal put it, automation technology now allows manufacturers to “function, and even thrive with fewer employees than ever before.”

Here is just one example of how this playing out, as reported by the Los Angeles Times: A Michigan company called Ranir moved its electric toothbrush manufacturing plant to China. A few years later, in an attempt to lower labor costs even further, it retuned one-fifth of that production to Grand Rapids. This is precisely the kind of move that Donald Trump has made the cornerstone of his job creation pledge in his effort to make America Great Again. In fact, Ranir is cranking out 13,000 American made toothbrush heads a day for Wal-Mart and other retailers. The work, however, entails only four actual humans whose jobs involve monitoring the computers that control the robots that are doing the actual work. This is the new industrial food chain: from well-paid American workers, to low-paid Chinese workers, to no-pay robots. Clearly, the days of $25-an-hour manufacturing jobs as a mainstay of our economy have ended. The plants may return from off-shore, but the jobs aren’t coming with them.

The nation’s 1.7 million truck drivers, many making $70,000 a year or more with full medical benefits, will likely be the next large group to be replaced by technology. In another decade, perhaps sooner, the trucking industry is banking on having employee-free fleets of driverless vehicles. High on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ list of jobs endangered by technology is that of mail carrier, once a highly sought lifetime guarantee of economic security. Also vulnerable, says the BLS, are radio announcers and disc jockeys who are being replaced by automated playlists. Same goes for newspaper reporters, a job class already reduced by more than 30% due to the product’s digital platform. The BLS sees further reductions as a result of the ability of computers to generate stories, a process currently in limited use by the Associated Press. Even insurance underwriters are going the way of the dinosaur, replaced by software programs. These, and many more good middle class jobs like them, are heading for extinction, with no apparent successor in sight.

What does that mean for our economy? Try wrapping your head around this statistic: The average annual pre-tax salary for the bottom half of American workers (by income) is $16,197. That’s only $1,000 a year above what a teenager working 40 hours a week at McDonalds makes, based on the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. In other words, our problem is not an absence of jobs; it’s the lack of jobs that pay well. Unrestrained, free market capitalism has run amok. Corporations are making gigantic profits with minimal labor costs, thanks to mechanized, non-human production.

Statistically, we are now approaching full employment. Yet, the average worker on the bottom half of the income range is paid close to the poverty level, an amount almost identical to what it was 40 years ago. Meanwhile, those in the top 10% of that pay range saw their income increase by 231% over the same period. There isn’t a jobs program proposed by Donald Trump or anyone else that even pretends to close that gap. On Wednesday, I will discuss a potential solution for this dilemma. Please stay tuned.

WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE OVER RUSSIA’S THEFT OF OUR ELECTION?

The biggest guessing game in Washington right now is what it will take for the Democrats to throw a major league temper tantrum over the antics of the incoming administration. How about a conclusion by the CIA and FBI that Russian espionage helped elect Donald Trump? Wait, that actually happened, didn’t it? It was easy to miss because the reaction from the loyal opposition was more of a whimper than a wail.

House Democratic leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., normally no shrinking violet when it comes to pitched rhetoric, responded to the bombshell with these uncharacteristically modulated sentences: “This is not (about) overturning this election. This is about making sure it doesn’t happen again.”

In the Senate, incoming Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, said the unanimous consensus by the country’s top intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the election to help Trump win was “simultaneously stunning and not surprising.” He and Pelosi then pushed for a bipartisan congressional investigation. Watergate and 9/11 eventually had their investigations, but they were preceded by well-deserved rhetorical flourishes aimed at setting a moral tone for the country.

Obviously, such an inquiry is necessary. But from the standpoint of leveraging power and public opinion in dealing with Team Trump, particularly as a minority party, it is far from sufficient. I’ve never been an advocate of frivolously jumping into battles. Anger is not a strategy, but used sparingly and selectively, it can be an effective tactic, particularly when laced with a dose or two of righteous indignation. Given the enormity of evil associated with Russian spies pressing their fingers on the scales of our democracy, it’s hard to think of a better time to let loose with that tactic. As Rabbi Hillel so wisely and rhetorically asked, “If not now, when?”

Now is the time for Democratic leaders to fan out to the networks and cable shows, talking points in hand. Now is the time for them to scream from the rooftops about an election that was stolen from the American people. Now is the time to avoid mincing words. It’s time to call Donald Trump out as Vladimir Putin’s puppet, the candidate backed by the Kremlin’s finest chicanery. Now is the time to take to the streets, not because we don’t like Donald Trump, but because his election was rigged by the Russians and, therefore lacks legitimacy.

One of the first things I learned as a union negotiator is that if your side is suffering a power deficit, as ours always did, you have to find a way to create power. Right now, through a confluence of circumstances, Democrats, who are sorely lacking in political power, have an opportunity to gain leverage. But they have to rise above their post-election shell shock and timidity. Russian spies helped elect Donald Trump, for God’s sake. Why tiptoe around it? If nothing else, a strong offense could pull Trump off his transition game, sending him into late night Twitter defense, a play that brings a cringe to even his most ardent supporters. Better yet, it could build enough steam for the Senate to torpedo the confirmation of Putin’s buddy, Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State.

There is power in the moral high ground. It captures peoples’ hearts and minds, rallying them to a noble cause. No, it is not likely to stop a Trump presidency. But it can alter the narrative. And as we learned from this election, the right narrative delivers power. Instead of the outsider riding into Washington on his white horse to shake everything up, we can make it about Russian skullduggery producing a U.S. president who had 2.8 million fewer votes than Putin’s nemesis, Hillary Clinton. To those who say, “Get over it. Trump won; he is our president,” a reminder is in order. Barack Obama won in 2008 and 2012, by much wider electoral vote margins and without interference from a foreign adversary. Yet, the legitimacy of his presidency was challenged by Republicans from Day 1, all on the basis of utter balderdash. Every blatantly false claim imaginable – from being a Muslim to his birth in Kenya – was used to challenge the authenticity of the country’s first black president.

Although despicable, the Republican strategy was effective. It weakened his administration, particularly in the early years. Democrats may be hesitant to follow that path because it left such a stench in the political atmosphere. But there is one huge difference between then and now, namely a genuine, real life, honest-to-God basis to challenge the legitimacy of the 45th president.

FBI Director James Comey, a Republican and obviously no friend of Hillary Clinton, today joined the CIA and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in declaring that Russia’s interference in the election was done to help Trump win. Couple those findings with Putin’s autocratic history as a dictator who has had his political opponents imprisoned and murdered, and you have a compellingly strong basis upon which to challenge the legitimacy of this president.

Unfortunately, the Democratic response has been limited to meekly calling for an investigation, as if we were dealing with some sort of bureaucratic screw up, as opposed to one of the most extraordinary events in our political history. The party’s leaders are understandably in a bit of post-election disarray right now. For the sake of the country, they need to quickly get past it. And then work up some passionate outrage over Russia’s theft of our election.

TRUMP DROPS A DIME ON CHRISTIE TO PROTECT THE RUSSIANS

In trying to defend the Russians against accusations of hacking the Democrats’ emails, Donald Trump first suggested that the culprit could be a 400-pound guy “sitting on his bed.” Now he says it might have “been a guy in New Jersey.” Put the clues together, people. Trump is clearly fingering Chris Christie. There just aren’t that many 400-pound New Jersey Republicans with a propensity for dirty tricks. (See Bridgegate.)

Pity the poor governor from the Garden State. Once the GOP’s king of the hill, before being vanquished by the president-elect, Christie spent all fall clinging to Trump like a hostage to his captor. He was rewarded for his blind subservience by the then-dubious distinction of heading up Trump’s transition team. Of course that was back when not even The Donald thought he would ever have anything to actually transition to. Within days of his unanticipated victory, Christie was summarily transitioned out. He has now been reduced to playing Trump’s imaginary foil in his unwavering and unnerving defense of Vladimir Putin. Poor Chris Christie. He was, for one brief shining moment, a credible presidential candidate. Now, to Trump, he’s a just a fat guy sitting on his bed in New Jersey, tying up bridge traffic and hacking John Podesta’s emails.

Fantasy? Sure, but it’s not all that far outside the realm of our new normal. Is it just me, or does our new normal really resemble a bad dream sequence, or maybe an old “Twilight Zone” episode? The first half of the weekend was devoted to an esoteric battle between the CIA and the FBI over whether Russia interfered with our presidential election in order to help Trump win or just to mess with us. The second half was filled with Trump defending the Putin crowd from any wrongdoing and preparing to nominate as secretary of state an oil company executive with close ties to Russia.

I keep having flashbacks to my elementary school years. At precisely 1 p.m. central time on the first Wednesday of every month, an air raid siren went off and we had to crawl under our desks until it stopped. This was how we prepared for a Russian attack. It was traumatic for me. I was too big to fit under my desk, so I sort of curled up next to it, certain that I would be the first to die when the bombs started dropping. Fast forward 60 years: these sneaky Russians have moved on from bombing elementary schools to screwing with our elections.

I get the fact that the cold war is over, but Putin’s regime has been a stubbornly unpleasant thorn in our side for years. The Washington Post’s incredible reporting Friday that the CIA has evidence of Russia’s interference in our presidential election was blockbuster stuff. It was almost enough for me to crawl under my desk. I could fit there now but am way too old and arthritic to get up again.

There was a time, not all that long ago, when credible reports of Russian election tampering would have triggered a strong, swift bipartisan response on the part of our country’s political players. And the Republicans would have been out front banging the war drums. Yet it took Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell more than 48 hours to issue this remarkably tepid statement: “The Russians are not our friends.” His initial reaction to the Post’s report was to express doubt over the accuracy of the CIA’s findings, echoing with subdued language the more verbosely articulated sentiment of President-elect Trump who called the claim of Russian interference “ridiculous.” By this morning, however, McConnell reversed course and supported the call for a congressional investigation.

Of course, long-time Republican Russian critics like Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham were not swayed by Trump’s affinity for Putin. Both were quick to criticize Russian interference and call for a thorough investigation. Neocon hawk and former UN Ambassador John Bolton would have ordinarily joined that chorus. However, he is now looking for a top state department job in the new administration. He told Fox News that he thinks the Russian election flap may be a “false flag” planted by the Obama Administration in order to rile the Russians. That motion appeared to die for lack of a second.

That pretty much leaves Trump and his hangers-on sticking with the Russia-can-do-no-evil position. Putin is one of the few players on the world stage never to get so much as a vindictive late night tweet from the incoming president. Trump is fond of recalling how Putin once described him as brilliant. If that’s all it takes to influence this administration, O.J. Simpson should get himself a thesaurus of superlatives and a pardon application. And when he’s done, he should pass them both on to poor old Chris Christie.