Category: Politics

CLUELESS GOP FRESHMEN RAKE IN THE CASH BY SAYING DUMB STUFF

Based on media attention and fundraising prowess, many of today’s Republican congressional “stars” are knucklehead neophytes who make up for a lack of public policy chops by mastering the dark arts of outrage and chicanery. 

Think Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. She’s the QAnon alum from Georgia who, during her first few months in office, managed to insult more than a quorum of the House and Senate. She was elected in 2020 after endorsing a call for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s execution.

Although MTG, as headline writers call her, is clearly driving the clown car, she is not alone in the vehicle.  Riding shotgun is Colorado’s latest gift to Congress, Lauren Boebert who created all sorts of pandemonium when she tried to smuggle a loaded handgun onto the House floor. Then there is North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn, the House’s youngest member at 25. He insists Dr. Anthony Fauci is a “pawn in the Chinese Communist Party,” and that Sen. Cory Booker is working to “ruin white males.” 

Although these fumbling fledgling freshmen have yet to perform a substantive legislative act, their ability to monetize the preposterous placed them in the House’s top five percent of campaign fundraisers. In the first quarter of 2021, MTG raised $3.2 million, mostly from small dollar donors. The only House member to outraise her was the person she wanted killed; Speaker Pelosi at $4 million. 

In another era, very few of us would have even been aware of someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene.  Why is that? Well, once upon a time, members of Congress were ordained to venerate their high offices by working hard, speaking less, and generally earning respect through a persona of thoughtfulness and integrity.  All that has gone the way of rotary phones and floppy disks.

Sam Rayburn, the legendary House speaker during the Franklin Roosevelt era, crafted his own orientation session for newly elected members. According to his biographers, Rayburn listened to their plans for changing the world overnight. Then, he offered them a glass of bourbon and this advice: “You know here in Congress there are 435 prima donnas and they all can’t be lead horses. If you want to get along, you have to go along.” 

For decades, new senators were given information packets that explained the norms of Congress.  Following Rayburn’s equestrian theme, the briefing quoted the advice an unnamed senator offered new members back in the 1950s. He said Congress was composed of two kinds of people, “show horses and work horses. If you want to get your name in the papers, be a show horse. If you want to gain the respect of your colleagues, keep quiet and be a work horse.”

The late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy waited 17 months after he was first elected to speak on the floor of that chamber. And he began his primordial speech by apologizing for not waiting longer.  “. . .It is with some hesitation that I rise to speak on the pending legislation before the Senate. A freshman Senator should be seen, not heard; should learn, and not teach.”

Marjorie Taylor Greene is no Ted Kennedy.  She filed articles of impeachment against President Biden on his first full day in office, much to the embarrassment of House GOP leaders.  She publicly ridiculed the transgender daughter of a congressional colleague. She compared the House’s mandatory mask mandate to the Holocaust. Just last week, she tweeted that COVID-19 won’t hurt you unless you are obese or over 65, provoking Twitter to suspend her account for 12 hours. As discipline for her incorrigible outrageousness, the House voted in February to remove Greene from all committees.

That meant MTG suddenly had more time to convert that outrageousness into campaign donations.  Two weeks after the House voted to banish her from all committees, Greene’s popularity among Republicans went up 11 percentage points, and her national recognition gained 14 points.  That in turn led to more than 100,000 donors sending her an average of $32.

As Vox’s Gregory Svirnovskiy noted, MTG’s fundraising haul is “a reminder that gaining notoriety on conservative media – rather than making efforts to pass meaningful legislation – is what holds real value in the modern Republican Party.  

That’s why Rep. Cawthorn, the 25-year-old from North Carolina, decided to forgo the hiring of legislative analysts in favor of a staff focused only on communication. He, like Greene and Boebert, make no pretense of passing laws. To them, it’s all about marketing themselves by doing crazy stuff.  As their mentor, Donald Trump, taught them, there is a rabid, hateful, antivaxxer base out there that won’t hesitate to share their credit card numbers with anyone promising to blow the system up. 

Another key player in the Trumpian school of outrage over substance is, of course, Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz.   Although under federal investigation involving sex trafficking allegations, he raised $1.8 million in the first quarter, mostly by preaching the Gospel According to Trump and mouthing whatever other silly narratives struck his fancy.  In his recently released book, Firebrand, Gaetz spells out his formula for political success: “Why raise money to advertise on the news channels when I can make the news? And if you aren’t making the news, you aren’t governing.”

Take one more look at that last sentence to fully grasp the political philosophy of this young crowd of Republican influencers: “And if you aren’t making the news, you aren’t governing.” Back in the 18th Century, our founders struggled to create a new system of governance. They turned to the philosophies of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. They talked about “natural rights”, about a “social contract”, and “popular sovereignty”. They believed that the best form of governance is when elected leaders represent the interests of the people, a notion known then as republicanism. After intense thought and debate, they put it all together, this new concept of governing. That was the beginning of the United States of America.

Then, 245 years later, comes a clarion call for a totally new concept of government. And what is it? What does the trumpet sound? “If you aren’t making the news, you aren’t governing.”

God help us all if these new Republican firebrands ever take over.    

THANKS TO THE SUPREME COURT, GOP MOVES CLOSER TO MAKING BLACK VOTES NOT COUNT

The racial reckoning ignited by George Floyd’s murder entered its second year with a severe case of whiplash. In a rare bipartisan vote, Congress designated Juneteenth as a national holiday, marking the end of slavery 156 years ago. Two weeks later, the Supreme Court took a sledge hammer to one of this country’s premiere civil rights laws.

As if that were not enough to provoke metaphysical vertigo, many of the Republicans who voted for the Juneteenth holiday are hellbent on keeping the subject of racial strife – past and present – out of public school classrooms.  They insist that systemic racism ended a long time ago and teachers should not talk about it.

So here’s a subversive extra credit assignment for high school students:  Download the Supreme Court’s recent decision eviscerating the Voting Rights Act (VRA), and then, with a highlighter, mark every past and present example of systemic racism you can find. (Tip: don’t forget to read Justice Elena Kagan’s dissent, even if you have to buy a second highlighter.) When you return to school this fall, quietly drop your work on the teacher’s desk.  If you live in a red state and like your teacher, put it in a plain paper bag.

The VRA was all about systemic racism. Long seen as the crown jewel of the civil rights movement, this powerful 1965 law was designed to quash a multitude of systems that kept Black people from voting. The law’s teeth were divided between two chapters. One of them required a number of southern states with a history of discrimination to have any new voting law approved by the Justice Department. Between 1965 and 2006, that department blocked nearly 1,200 discriminatory voting laws from taking effect (P. 8 of Kagan dissent).  

Eight years ago, however, the Supreme Court tossed that entire chapter out, saying that “times have changed,” and that states no longer need Justice Department approval on voting regulations.  To no surprise of anyone paying attention, the dearth of new discriminatory voting laws had little to do with changing times.  It was all about preclearance from the Justice Department.  Within days of that 2013 decision, Caucasian-centric states started cranking out election laws making it more difficult for people of color to vote.  That production line continues to operate at full speed.

The only solace was the remaining VRA chapter on enforcement, the one that prohibits states from having any election practice that “results in a denial or abridgement” to vote on the basis of race. In theory, the courts could strike down laws that brought about that kind of a discriminatory result. Until now, that is.  In its final decision of this year’s term, the Supreme Court used an Arizona case to effectively slam the door on the law’s only remaining enforcement mechanism.

That 6-3 ruling came from Justice Samuel Alito and five fellow conservative justices, all rabid adherents of deciding cases by the precise text of a statute, rather than attaching their own meaning to a law.  Amazingly, they ignored the law’s singular threshold for finding an election regulation to be discriminatory, namely that it “results in a denial or abridgement” of voting rights on the basis of race.  Instead, the majority upheld two Arizona election regulations that resulted in a disparate impact on the voting rights of Blacks, Latinos and American Indians (P. 32 of Kagan dissent). Why? Because, said the court, there was no proof that those results were motivated by an intent to discriminate.  Congress amended the VRA back in 1982 to make it clear that the standard of enforcement of a voting law is whether it has a discriminatory impact on the basis of race, regardless of motive.  

At issue in the Arizona case were two new election laws.  One made it a crime for people to pick up sealed absentee ballots and deliver them to a collection box or polling place. The other voided all ballots cast by voters in the wrong precinct. There was evidence that both laws impacted Black, Latino and American Indian voters far more than it affected whites.  

But, but, but, say Alito and his textualist buddies, the state had a noble intent with these laws, namely to prevent voter fraud, although there have been zero instances of such fraud involving out-of-precinct voting and ballot collection.   

Although intent is not an element in VRA enforcement, it doesn’t take a think tank to figure out what is motivating an avalanche of state election restrictions aimed at making it more difficult for minority voters to cast a ballot.  Most people of color vote for Democrats. Keeping them away from the polls is good for Republicans.

In making their case for these two Arizona laws, GOP legislators openly argued that the restrictions are needed to damage the Democrats’ get-out-the-vote campaigns.  During oral arguments at the Supreme Court, Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked an attorney for the Republican National Committee why the party has an interest in the litigation.  The answer: the restrictions reduce Democratic votes and “politics is a zero sum game.”

In other words, the party of Lincoln is saying, in effect: “Nothing personal, Black people. We want to keep you from voting because most of you support Democrats. It’s got nothing to do with race.” The enormity of this court decision reaches far beyond Arizona.  The flood gates in every red state are wide open to unlimited obnoxiousness when it comes to keeping racial minorities away from the polls.  So far in 2021, 28 restrictive voting laws have been passed in 17 states, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

There is a gravestone in a Hattiesburg, Mississippi cemetery that bares this inscription: “If you don’t vote, you don’t count.” According to The Nation, buried in that grave is Vernon Dahmer, a voting rights activist and Hattiesburg NAACP chapter president back in the 1960s. Just months after the VRA was passed, Dahmer died when his home was firebombed by Klansmen.

Fifty-six years later, the future of the Republican Party depends on making sure that millions of non-white voters don’t count.  

Even with Juneteenth as a federal holiday, systemic racism marches on. And on. And on.

LACKING ISSUES PEOPLE CARE ABOUT, THE GOP DECLARES WAR ON TRANS KIDS

Pity the poor Republicans. While a Democratic administration showers the country with vaccinations and stimulus checks, the GOP has been madly searching for an issue that might capture the hearts and minds of the American electorate.  

Hark, they think they found one: beating up on transgender kids.

So far this year, Republican lawmakers have introduced at least 117 bills in 33 state legislatures targeting the transgender community. The vast majority of them are aimed at adolescents. Arkansas just passed a law prohibiting medical professionals from providing gender-affirming health care for trans kids.  Similar bills have been introduced in 19 other states.  These are the same Republican wizards who tout liberty and the right to choose when it comes to wearing facemasks in a deadly pandemic. Their legislation slams the door on the liberty of parents and doctors to choose a course of treatment for transgender children.

Now comes Florida, always a contender in the arena of brazen legislative obnoxiousness. The state’s Republican-controlled House passed a measure that not only prohibits trans girls from playing girl sports, but also requires student athletes to undergo genitalia inspections in case of a “gender challenge.” 

This is political child abuse. It’s a repugnant assault on vulnerable kids who are struggling to be accepted for who they are, genitalia notwithstanding.  No need to take my word for it. All of the applicable professional organizations have unequivocally expressed their abhorrence with these bills:  American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Association of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, among many others.   

The people pushing this vile agenda have only one objective: to light a fire under the GOP’s far right base. This is being produced by the same folks who used the fear of gay marriage to turn out conservative Republican voters in 2004.  Remember that ditsy trope of “It’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve?”   

Turns out that Adam and Steve have been happily married for close to a decade, and there isn’t a locust in sight. So the party with no economic, environmental or health care plan, had to find another marginal group for the cultural warriors to take on.  Enter the transgender adolescents.

“This is the wedge issue that will bring suburban women back to the polls and increase their support for Republicans,” Penny Nance, one of the leaders of the anti-trans campaign, told Politico. “Republicans would be foolish not to lean into it.”

In what moral universe is it acceptable to inflict children with untold trauma and pain in order to raise campaign funds and win votes? Nance and her merry band of trans smashers are so singularly focused on the Machiavellian politics of their movement that they don’t, even for a minute, see the kids they are hurting. 

They recognize neither their humanity nor their fragility. Instead, they are using these young transgender folks as nothing more than pawns in their game. And as symbols of a “woke, leftist agenda” devoted to disrupting the natural order of life by turning boys into girls, and girls into boys. As their posters declare, “God made only two sexes: male and female.”  And neither the twain shall meet.

On the contrary, that twain has been meeting quite regularly for hundreds of years. Ancient Greek mythology is filled with references to female souls in male bodies.  The Roman poet, Ovid, wrote about a man named Tiresias who became a woman. An 18th century French politician, the Chevalier d’Eon, spent the first half of her life as a man and the second half as a woman. In this country, records document the lives of transgender people going back to the 1600s. 

This latest anti-trans mishegas is aimed at what pollsters (here and here) describe as a shrinking subset of conservatives who take personal offense with others who are substantially different than themselves. Over the decades, this is the cohort that opposed racial integration, affirmative action, immigration and marriage equality. Now they are gunning for transgender kids, convinced that gender transitioning is just another crazy phase some teens are going through, like lip piercings or playing Fortnite.

There isn’t room in this space to cite the voluminous medical evidence that establishes, beyond any reasonable doubt, that this is not a trend. (If you want to dig deeper, you can do so here, here, here and here.)

A small sampling:

  • Gender dysphoria, is a medically recognized diagnosis by the American Psychiatric Association. It refers to a “marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and their assigned gender, lasting at least six months.”  There are specific procedures and tests involved in reaching that diagnosis.
  • Puberty blocking medication can be prescribed to delay physical body changes associated with adolescence, allowing a patient time to decide if they want to transition. If they do make that decision, in consultation with parents and physicians, they can begin taking hormone therapy at the age of 16 or later. (These treatments would become illegal under Republican legislation.)
  • One study reported that 50 percent of untreated trans kids have seriously contemplated suicide. Another found that more than 50 percent of transgender males and 30 percent of trans females actually attempted to kill themselves. Many succeeded. The administration of puberty blockers and/or hormone treatments substantially reduced suicide attempts. 

That’s the empirical approach to grasping this issue. There is another route, one centered more in the heart than in the brain. While we may be initially shocked, unsettled and confused when our nephew becomes our niece, it’s not about us. It’s about her. We don’t need to fully and immediately understand. We just need to keep on loving our niece, accepting her decision and supporting her on her own terms. That path will lead her to more happiness, authenticity and opportunity for a life well lived.

If only the Republicans don’t screw it up.

CONGRESSIONAL ABDICATION NEEDS TO END, AND SO DOES THE FILIBUSTER

With the stroke of a pen, Joe Biden made many of us smile again.  The Muslim ban is gone. The Paris climate accord is back. The DREAMers are saved from deportation. Transgender Americans are welcomed back into the military. What a euphoric breath of fresh air after a four-year bout of Trump derangement syndrome! 

The trouble with euphoria, of course, is that it’s a temporary condition. As the late poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote, “. . .even in heaven they don’t sing all the time.”  Although some of Biden’s sweet songs will keep playing for at least the next three years and nine months, at some point the music will stop, and the magic pen will be in the hands of a new president. 

Therein lies our problem. The structure of our government has become so flawed and broken that we have come to accept these massive bi-polar waves of transformation every four years. A Republican senate stonewalled Barak Obama, so he turned to executive orders to deal with immigration, climate change and human rights.  Donald Trump molded his presidency around undoing everything Obama did.  Then along comes Joe to undo what Trump did. 

The last thing the authors of our Constitution wanted was a government run by executive edict.  They’d had enough of the monarchy stuff. They saw Congress as the strongest of the three branches, and vested it with the power to enact laws through deliberation.  The president would then execute those laws.  It was the founders’ way of eliminating policy limbo, of protecting us from the vertigo of a revolving door of presidential fiat. 

And presidential fiat is precisely what we have now.  Congress, particularly the Senate, has abdicated it’s role of lawmaking. One study, for example, found that Congress has spent only a few days over the past five years even talking about the pressing issue of immigration, with no resolution.  The record is similar on other critical issues.  As a result, the president has become a one-person legislature.

The United States Senate was once touted as the world’s greatest deliberative body. Sadly, it has morphed into a dysfunctional morass. Gone are the days of scintillating debate and creative problem-solving. In their place is a dreary, vacuous rhetoric on an intellectual par with a dismissive schoolyard taunt.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer says Democrats will do whatever they have to in order to pass legislation on gun control, voting rights and infrastructure, even if it means eliminating the filibuster. That’s the rule requiring 60 votes in the 100-member chamber to pass most measures.

Comes now Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who needs to gain only one GOP senate seat in the next election to retake the majority. After hissing at Schumer’s quest to pass a liberal agenda on the heels of blowing up the filibuster, McConnell went into full toxic na-na-na-na-boo-boo mode.  If Democrats kill the filibuster, McConnell said his party, once it regains majority status, will “ram through” sweeping abortion restrictions, a hardening of the U.S.-Mexico border, nation-wide anti-union laws, defunding of Planned Parenthood and expansion of gun rights. Some of us are old enough to remember when Republican leaders designed legislative agendas based on well thought out policy concepts, rather than their value as weaponry.

We probably shouldn’t have been surprised to hear McConnell trot out the cold war trope of mutual assured destruction. In his mind, the Democrats passing voting rights protections by a one-vote majority, is a nuclear bomb, and must be met with a commensurate warhead of, say,  draconian abortion restrictions.  The strategy, of course, is to leave both sides so afraid of their opponent’s agenda that neither push the nuclear button. (See the Cuban Missile Crisis.)

At least so far, mutual assured destruction has protected us from the apocalypse by creating an absence of nuclear war.  The problem with transporting that strategy into the legislative arena, however, is that we end up with an absence of legislation.  And that is precisely the dysfunctional mess we have been in for some time.  The filibuster rule has so paralyzed the Senate that it no longer even attempts to deal with the pressing issues of the day.  

The Democrats need to call McConnell’s bluff. Drop the damn nuclear bomb already. Blow up the filibuster, pass strong voting rights protections, along with gun safety, immigration reform and a long-overdue increase in the minimum wage.   Let the legislative process play out the way the founders intended and the Constitution provides. 

Lawmaking was placed in the hands of Congress principally because legislators are ultimately accountable to the people in their districts or states. By sizeable majorities, those people support Row v. Wade, union rights and sensible gun laws, and oppose anti-immigration policies and defunding Planned Parenthood. If Republicans regain control of the Senate, they would be quickly throwing it away by enacting McConnell’s punitive agenda. Call his bluff. Even if he carries out his threat, voters will have an opportunity to respond in the next election.  Either way is better than a paralyzed Congress and the revolving door of executive orders.

During the Constitutional Convention of 1787, James Madison described the Senate as a “necessary fence” to protect “the people against their rulers.”  In this aspirational vision, deliberation, shared thoughts and healthy give-and-take before a simple majority vote would serve democracy far better than the king-like whims of a president.   Unfortunately, the Senate subsequently stumbled its way into paralysis, first through the filibuster rule, and more recently by a hyper partisanship centered on playing to the party base. 

Madison’s fence is sorely needed today, more than ever. It will not be easy to get there. But all journeys begin with a single step. 

It’s time to take that first step by killing the filibuster, and returning the Senate to majority rule.  

EPILOGUE:  Out of total disrespect for the timing of this post, Senator Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, just announced that he will never vote to kill or weaken the filibuster. To quote a former president: “Sad.”   In politics, however, “never” can have a fairly short life. (See “Read my lips: No new taxes.”) 

CANCEL CULTURE: AN ADVENTURE IN MEANINGLESSNESS

Cancel culture has become the most insipid and meaningless term in our political lexicon. It needs to be, uhm, canceled. Posthaste.  

There was a time not too long ago, when cancel culture enjoyed a fairly specific meaning. Someone, typically a public figure, would say or do something offensive, usually of a racist, misogynistic, xenophobic or homophobic nature. (Think Roseanne Barr, Liam Neeson, Kanye West and J.K. Rowling.) Social media messages took out after them, calling for their contracts to be canceled and for consumers to stay forever clear of them. 

Although product boycotts and campaigns have been around longer than any of us, the concept of cancel culture, amped up by social media, emerged a couple of decades ago. Its roots, according to a Vox analysis, ironically stem from a misogynistic line in a 1991 film, New Jack City. In one scene, the protagonist’s girlfriend reacts to his relentless violence through a sobbing stream of tears. He immediately dumps her with this retort, “Cancel that bitch. I’ll buy another one.”  

From those humble beginnings, emerged an etymological metamorphosis that left cancel culture meaning, well, almost anything.  Republicans said impeachment was all about canceling Trump. Trump said impeachment was all about canceling his supporters. Democrats said Trump’s election fraud con was all about canceling Joe Biden’s 81 million votes. 

Wyoming GOP Rep. Liz Cheney was accused by fellow Republicans of falling into line with “leftist cancel culture” for her vote to impeach Trump.  The former president’s loyalists staged an unsuccessful coup to remove her from a key House leadership position. Cheney’s supporters labeled the move, “totally GOP cancel culture.”

It gets worse. Republicans on Capitol Hill spent the past two weeks in a cancel culture meltdown over Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head. They are still ranting about what they see as a far-left liberal conspiracy to remove racist drawings from children’s books, and to transition Mr. Potato Head into a gender-neutral toy. In both cases, the minimal tweaking involved was the work of corporate entities in the finest tradition of the free market system that Republicans once worshiped.  

Then there is Jenny Cudd, a 36-year-old florist from Midland, Texas. After forcing her way into the Capitol on January 6, Jenny did a Facebook live stream to announce that she and her fellow rioters had just broken down a door to get into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office.  She was indicted last week on five charges related to that incursion. Her reaction:  “This is 100 percent cancel culture,” she said. “(They) are trying to cancel me because I stood up for what it is that I believe in.” Jenny, of course, is free to believe to her heart’s content in obstruction of Congress, trespassing and breaking and entering. If she engages in such activity, however, she is subject to arrest. That’s not cancelation culture; that’s law enforcement.

Freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, insisted that she too was a victim of cancel culture when the Democratic majority in the House, along with 11 GOP members, voted to strip her of committee assignments. This rare sanction was in response to Greene’s social media support for the lollapalooza of political cancelations, namely the murder of Speaker Pelosi and other prominent Democratic lawmakers. Far from being canceled, Greene continues to serve in Congress and spews forth inanities on a daily basis.

Lest you think this propensity to attribute every bump in the road to cancel culture is an inside-the-beltway affliction, take a look at New York’s embattled Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo.  At last count, nine women, including former and current members of his staff, have accused him of sexual harassment or inappropriate touching. The state’s attorney general released a report showing that his administration had underreported the number of COVID deaths in nursing homes by as much as 50 percent.  An impeachment inquiry is underway and most of the state’s Democratic leaders have called for the governor’s resignation.  Cuomo’s response?  “This is cancel culture,” he said. “People know the difference between . . . bowing to cancel culture, and the truth. I’m not going to resign.”

It’s amazing the amount of work demanded from these two words.  At once, “cancel culture” must depict a presidential impeachment, a book publisher’s marketing plan, a Capitol rioter’s criminal defense, and the deletion of Mr. Potato Head’s honorific. On top of all that multitasking, the phrase is now being asked to save the political career of a governor credibly accused of serious wrongdoing. 

Linguists have a term for such overworking of a phrase. “Semantic bleaching,” according to University of Pennsylvania professor Nicole Holliday “. . . refers to the process where words don’t have the meaning they had before. (Through overuse) they come to mean nothing or something that is purely pragmatic, but not really laden with meaning.”

Oddly, this bleaching has removed all traces of red and blue from cancel culture, making it a bipartisan adventure in meaninglessness.  There may not be another force in the universe capable of creating a bond of unity between the likes of Donald Trump and Andrew Cuomo in the way cancel culture has.

During their COVID war of words last year, Cuomo said Trump had been “dismissed as a clown” and was now “trying to act like a king,” adding, “The best thing he ever did for New York City was leave.”  For his part, Trump called Cuomo “a bully thug. . .who heads probably the worst-run state in the country.”

Yet, when the ill political winds blew their way, these two warring sons of Queens reached for the life raft of cancel culture. They both boasted of being men of the people, and thumbed their noses at the forces that were out to cancel them.  Said Cuomo last week, off a script Trump could have written: “I’m not part of the political club. And you know what? I’m proud of it.”

Here’s a modest proposal in the interest of national unity: We toss another cup of bleach into the semantic wash, and let Trump and Cuomo cancel each other out, both forever removed from the public stage.  And henceforth, we use the word “cancel” only in connection with an appointment, reservation or engagement. 

Imagine what that enormous reduction in toxic masculinity levels would do for our culture! 

POLITICIANS SAY THE DARNDEST THINGS; THEY NEED TO STOP

Comparing Ted Cruz to a vampire  is out; comparing Hilary Clinton to the anti-Christ is in. Saying that Susan Collins is ignorant is out; saying that Rachel Maddow looks like Justin Bieber and should wear a necklace is in. Calling Mitch McConnell Lord Voldemort is out; calling Mitt Romney a pompous ass is in. Yes indeed, the hierarchy of vituperation has been reordered by those mavens of interpersonal communication known as the United States Senate.

Those outs came from Neera Tanden, the vanquished Biden nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget. The ins were from the mouths and Twitter fingers of, in the first two instances, Trump cabinet nominees confirmed by the Senate and, in the “pompous ass” example, from Trump himself, without a modicum of senatorial concern over decorum. 

All of those phrases exemplify disparagement through invective.  Such quips among like-minded folks may help reduce stress and win laughs. Viewed more widely, however, most linguists and conflict resolution experts will tell you that they are not conducive to crafting agreement among various factions (here, here and here).

Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, the Tanden confirmation battle totally evaded a serious – and long overdue – discussion about the role of civil discourse in governance. Instead, we got a Don Rickles cage fight over whose insults were the worst. 

Conservatives insisted that Tanden’s abrasive tweets disqualified her for the job because she insulted so many congressional leaders. Liberals trotted out a database of Trump’s 10,000 insults, along with impertinent slams from the former president’s cabinet nominees blessed by the Senate.  

Although she may well have been less offensive than her Republican counterparts, Tanden lost her confirmation battle over the slings and arrows of a churlish Twitter feed. In terms of distributive justice, the outcome was less than fair.  Others have said far worse and suffered no penalty.  

Yet, the saddest part of this whole episode is that it ended without any discussion, or even recognition, of the rampant degradation of political speech.  When our leaders routinely go for the jugular and deny or demean the humanity of partisan adversaries, they set the stage for the rest of the country.  That’s why, according to recent polling, 93 percent of respondents think incivility is a problem, and 68 percent see it as a crisis.  

The problem reaches far beyond the beltway.  A Democratic state legislator in New York tweeted this to a Republican staffer during the week before Christmas:  “Kill yourself.”  A  Republican official in Kansas took out over an American Indian running for Congress with this Facebook post: “Your radical socialist kick boxing lesbian Indian will be sent back packing to the reservation.”  

Then there is this tweet, from a Democrat running for Congress in North Carolina: “Screw they go low, we go high bullshit. When (GOP) extremists go low, we stomp their scrawny pasty necks with our heels and once you hear the sound of a crisp snap you grind you heel hard and twist it slowly side to side for good measure. He needs to know who whupped his ass.”

Apologists for this kind of toxic invective by political leaders are quick to note that the tradition dates back to the early days of the republic.  Thomas Jefferson reportedly called John Adams a “repulsive pedant” and a “hideous hermaphroditical character.”  Adams supposedly called Jefferson “the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father.” However, without social media or cable television, Jefferson and Adams could hack away at each other all day without the rest of the country knowing about it. Like the proverbial tree falling in the forest, a diabolical insult needs to be heard in order to do damage. 

And that is precisely what is happening now. Incivility, according to numerous studies, is contagious (here, here and here). Many otherwise genteel folks hear and read the gushing vitriol of their leaders, and then slowly amp up their own tone and volume when talking about politics.  Suddenly Thanksgiving dinner turns into a verbal Battle of the Bulge.  

Even more insidious, however, is that vitriolic political rhetoric is seen by many experts as a serious threat to our democracy.  Jeremy Frimer is a University of Winnipeg professor who studies the weaponization of incivility in politics.  Here’s what he wrote: “Incivility can create a sense that subjugating the rights of a political party is both justified and necessary, and thus leads to democratic collapse.”

Think back on the political messages floating around this past year.  How many times have Republican leaders used the term “socialist” to describe Democrats?  How many times have Democratic leaders used the term “racist” to describe Republicans?  In our world of endless metrics, it is remarkable nobody kept track.  Yet, a pollster tried to measure the impact of those pitches.  The result?  Eight of ten Republicans believe the Democratic party has been taken over by socialists, while 8 in 10 Democrats believe the GOP has been taken over by racists.  Add to that a “stolen election”, one imaginary and the other attempted-but-real, and you will have the perfect case study of how incivility can take us to the brink of insurrection.  

That’s why one-third of Americans who identify as Democrat or Republican believe that violence could be justified to advance their parties’ objectives.  That’s why our Capitol is currently surrounded by National Guard troops and razor wire-topped fencing.

I have no doubt that Neera Tanden would have made an excellent OMB director. Her apologies for the mean tweets were sincere and unqualified, (an object lesson for Andrew Cuomo). Pardon my wishful thinking, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if this whole sad episode turned into one of those infrequent aha moments? There are, of course, far better reasons for our leaders to lay off the name-calling. But if losing out on a Cabinet-level position gets some pols to dial it back a bit, so be it. Whatever it takes. Inertia is a potent force, but we Americans have changed directions many times in our history.  It’s time to do it again.

Before it’s too late. 

GOP LEADERS SEE TRUMP’S POWER THROUGH THE BLUR OF A REARVIEW MIRROR

The only thing that might save the Republican party from self-immolation is the warp-speed development of an anti-myopia vaccine.  Party leaders seem hell bent on crafting strategies for 2022 and 2024 with a vision that doesn’t extend past November of 2020. 

For the past four years, congressional Republicans showered an unhinged fool of a president with an obnoxious display of sycophancy.  They did this out of neither respect nor admiration. They did it out of fear. Donald Trump enjoyed consistently high approval ratings among GOP voters, not to mention a base that would literally go to war for him. And did. These legislators knew only too well from their fallen comrades that a binary choice awaited them: Either bow to the king or sacrifice your career. (Among the fallen: Jeff Flake, Bob Corker and Dean Heller.)

The issue then was about principled leadership. The goal for most Republican lawmakers was their own political survival, and that meant sacrificing their integrity for the electoral security afforded by Trump’s protection racket.  Although not exactly Profiles in Courage behavior, the choice was rational and understandable.  And it worked, until it didn’t.

The issue now is about how to steer the party in a post-Trump presidency, how to strategically craft an organizing principle that reaches beyond a warped reverence for a failed one-term demagog.  Sadly, for both the GOP and our democracy, this challenge is being badly blown. Stuck in pre-election and pre-riot mode, party strategists are forging ahead with a vintage 2017 litmus test: do no harm to Trump and his base.  

Smart, agile leaders don’t rely on the inertia of yesterday’s strategy to guide them through tomorrow’s challenges. Politics, like life, is dynamic, not static. Sure, Trump’s astronomically high polling levels among Republicans held for more than three years.  But that was yesterday. Today, his GOP approval rating has moved from the 80-to-90 percent range, to the 50s and 60s, according to the political polling site FiveThirtyEight.com.  National Public Radio reported last week that tens of thousands of recent Republican voters have changed their registration to either independent or to another party.

But that’s not all that has changed in the past few months.  Trump lost the election by more than 7 million votes, while Republicans did better than expected in down-ballot races. He lost his megaphone when Twitter permanently blocked him. Some 71 percent of Americans, according to a Reuters poll, believe the former president was responsible for the deadly Capitol riot. He became the first president to be impeached twice. Now that he is out of office, he faces a barrage of criminal and civil investigations that could well hold his feet to the fire for the next four years. 

Yet, the vast majority of congressional Republicans continue to cling to the same old script, somehow believing that Donald Trump’s political omnipotence knows no end. By looking behind them, they lose the opportunity to adjust for what lies ahead of them. In so doing, they end up feeding the beast when they should be starving him. 

There is a scientific concept that captures this dynamic, at least metaphorically. In 1927, Werner Heisenberg shook up the world of quantum physics by positing that you can’t, at the same time, know both the position and the momentum of a subatomic particle. The act of isolating the particle in order to measure its position, means you can’t simultaneously know how fast it is moving. Heisenberg’s work came to be known as the “uncertainty principle.”  You may remember it from physics class or Breaking Bad.  

Although politics hardly operates with the precision of quantum physics, it has its own version of the uncertainty principle:  A position created in and for a given moment is subject to unmeasurable momentum and therefore may not be suitable for future moments. Many politicians have ignored the uncertainty principle at their peril.  Remember “Read my lips: No New Taxes” from George H.W. Bush’s 1988 presidential campaign? It got him elected.  Two years later, the economy took a dive and Bush signed a tax hike bill. Angry voters denied him a second term.  

Poor John McCain took a position in his 2008 presidential campaign that was obliterated by momentum in far less than two years.  “The fundamentals of the economy are strong,” McCain said, despite an approaching recession. Hours later, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. The recession was on, and McCain’s quest for the White House was, for all practical purposes, over. 

Republicans in Congress had a perfect opportunity to take full advantage of the rapid momentum of Donald Trump’s decline. They could have hastened it with a total reset of the master-servant relationship of the past four years. After all, their lives and our country’s democracy were on the line when the 45th president sent his rag-tag militia on a violent rampage of the Capitol.  That inflection point cried out for an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote to impeach and convict in the name of national unity. It was the perfect time for Republicans to have changed their position in light of the momentum of Trump’s declining power.

The argument against such a move was that the party needs the Trumpism faction in order to win future elections, although it didn’t seem to work that well for Trump himself last November. As the Washington Post’s Megan McArdle wrote last week, “There is no Trumpism. There is only Trump.”   The MAGA thugs who desecrated the Capitol didn’t urinate on the floor or throw fire extinguishers at cops out of a deep commitment to supply-side economics or the appointment of originalist judges. They wanted the system blown up, and Trump was their guy to do it. 

Their hero is now out of the White House and off of Twitter. He sits on a Mar-a-Lago balcony thinking up insults to toss at Mitch McConnell. Except nobody really cares, certainly not Mitch McConnell.  The imaginary revolution is over. The swamp wasn’t drained. The wall wasn’t built. The virus didn’t disappear.

For shellshocked Republicans, all that remains is to decide whether to, once again, become a party of ideas, or remain a delusional coalition of Q-Annon loonies, angry Proud Boys and other assorted red-hatted white supremacists.  Those who prefer the former need to let go of Trump, to cut the cord and move on.

 Until that happens, the Republican Party will be but a noisy bastion of ineffective uncertainty.

GOP TO BIDEN: UNITY MEANS GIVING US WHAT WE WANT

It came as no surprise that Joe Biden’s clarion call for unity quickly devolved into a definitional food fight.  Every time the new president dropped the u-word during his inaugural speech, you just knew that Mitch McConnell’s lower lip was quivering, even as rhetorical retorts danced in his head.

Alas, in this malignant moment of putrid politics, when it comes to the meaning of unity, there is no unity. Only an overabundance of sophistry. 

McConnell whined to Fox News the other day about how Biden “talks a lot about unity,” but continues to push the Democrats’ agenda. Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton tweeted that the president’s call for unity was a “lie” because the person he chose to direct the administration’s Iran policy was not sufficiently hawkish.

Another Republican senator, John Cornyn of Texas, put out a tweet lambasting Biden for ignoring unity by overturning Trump’s ban on transgender troops serving in the military. Not to be outdone, House minority leader Kevin McCarthy told Politico that Biden turned his back on unity by offering a plan that would give undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship. A large majority of Americans support the President’s position on both issues (here and here).

In each case, these Republicans defined unity as the process of giving them what they want. How utterly silly. Someone sticks a gun in your face and says, “Give me your money.” If you hand over your money, are you then in unity with your robber?  Of course not. Capitulation is not unity.  

The Cambridge Dictionary offers this simple definition of unity: “the state of being joined together.”  That nicely captures the heart of Biden’s inaugural peroration on the subject. Said the President: “My whole soul is in this: Bringing America together. Uniting our people. And uniting our nation, uniting to fight the common foes we face: Anger, resentment, hatred. Extremism, lawlessness, violence. Disease, joblessness, hopelessness.” 

In other words, we can disagree with each other on everything from tax policy to environmental regulation, but we remain “joined together” as Americans. We can do passionate political battle over ideas and values, and still respect each other as members of the American family. This type of unity is more of an aspirational construct than a governance rulebook. That’s why Biden, in his inaugural address, called unity, “. . .that most elusive of things in a democracy.”  

Other dictionaries define unity as “agreement, accord, a condition of harmony.” This is the meaning many congressional Republicans are attaching to the word. However, they go much further and posit – self-servingly – that only by agreeing with them can there be unity. 

It’s important to remember the context for President Biden’s unity speech. He spoke those words only days after his predecessor sicced a violent mob on the Capitol in a last ditch effort to subvert the results of the 2020 election.  It was the lowest point for American unity in our lifetimes.  No serious person could rationally conclude that the Joe Biden who left retirement in the twilight of his life to “restore America’s soul” would see unity as capitulating to the Republicans. 

Besides, even in better times, why would we want the type of unity that insists on an absence of disagreement? Vigorous debate over clashing viewpoints is the lifeblood of democracy. Voicing contrary opinions in places like Russia and North Korea will get you killed or sent to prison.  

Donald Trump was a master at creating that kind of forced unity, all based on people blindly following him.  He called folks who disagreed with him traitors or treasonous. He pushed Republicans to make the party’s platform whatever Trump wanted it to be.  Even after inciting a deadly insurrection, the vast majority of congressional Republicans stand united with him.  That’s the kind of unity to avoid at all cost.

And it certainly wasn’t the kind of unity President Biden summoned us to in his inaugural address. He didn’t equate unity with unanimity, nor did he call for the elimination of all opinions other than his own.   His plea to this very broken and angry country was simply to chill a bit, to take a collective deep breath, to turn down the vitriol a few notches, to remember that we are all Americans and that we are in this together.  

Early in my newspaper career, I covered the Minnesota Legislature. There was a phrase I heard often in those days, from lawmakers of both parties: “Let’s agree to disagree.”  I was young and cynical then, and always rolled my eyes when the line was spoken. It seemed trite and obvious. Looking back, however, I realized that those legislators – in a very different political climate – were doing what Biden called on us to do now. They dealt respectfully with each other, agreeing on some issues and agreeing to disagree on others, all without the need to call in the National Guard.  Agreeably disagreeing was unity.

We are lightyears away from that kind of environment right now. Members of Congress are wearing bulletproof vests and require police protection when traveling. The Washington Post just ran a story about the juxtaposition of a restaurant and a hospital in Michigan. The restaurant defied state laws on mask wearing and social distancing in order to cater to customers who believed the pandemic was a product of a left wing, socialist hoax.  Like minded folks drove miles out of their way in order to dine like it was 2019.  Down the road, the local hospital’s intensive care unit was filled to capacity with COVID-19 patients. 

Yet, there is every reason to believe that our long journey back to the civility of unity has begun. In the nearly three weeks our new president has been in office, we haven’t heard a single insult out of the White House.  Biden seems to have gone out of his way to avoid talking about Trump or his impeachment. On top of all that, he spent two hours last week hosting a meeting of Senate Republicans in the Oval Office.

Although it now appears that the president’s $1.9 billion stimulus bill will be passed with only Democratic votes, don’t believe the predictable punditry about Biden backtracking on unity. He can do two things at the same time: Seriously listen to and consider Republican arguments and suggestions for change, and get the best package possible for the Americans who desperately need it.  

That’s what agreeing to disagree is all about.

OUT OF CRISIS AND CHAOS COMES A RARE SHOT AT MEANINGFUL CHANGE

As the aspirational glow of the Biden-Harris inauguration begins to recede, there remains a residue of hope that we are entering a period of significant metamorphous.  This optimism reaches beyond a mere change of presidents.  

After all, the toxic division in this country wasn’t invented by Donald Trump. He just exploited and deepened it.  Similarly, it won’t be eliminated by Joe Biden, although he is likely to reduce and mitigate it. 

Cultures rarely experience rapid and profound change. There are, however, exceptions, unique times when stasis suddenly succumbs to transformation. A strong case can be made that we are now in one of those moments. 

The Atlantic’s George Packer recently dug out an old nugget of thought on this subject from the late German philosopher Gershom Scholem. There are, Scholem wrote, “crucial moments when it is possible to act. If you move then, something happens.”  He called such periods “plastic hours,” and said they occur very rarely.  Based on Scholem’s work, Packer wrote that plastic hours require a major crisis and the “right alignment” of public opinion.

Clearly, we can check the crisis box on this prerequisite form. For a year now, we’ve been stacking crises on top of each other:  a deadly pandemic, an economic collapse for the middle and working class, a racial injustice reckoning and a violent insurrection by white supremacists and nationalists.  

Collectively and individually, these events have already altered the status quo and recalibrated the rhythms of our lives.  From the workplace to the schoolhouse, from renaming athletic teams to using a capital “B” when writing about Black people, our culture – in large ways and small – has been in a perpetual sea change since early 2020. 

Based on the theory articulated by Packer and Scholem, these multiple crises have knocked inertia on its rear end, leaving us in a state of flux and fertile ground for substantial change, provided that the other box of the plastic hours’ test can be checked:  the right alignment of public opinion.

At first glance, it might seem dubious to think that a deeply divided electorate could produce such an alignment.  Political scientists have referred to America as a “49 percent nation,” based on the relatively close results of presidential elections in this century.  George Washington University professor Lara Brown put it this way: “As there is no sort of long-term winner, the fighting gets fiercer.”

Yet, our perpetual partisan divide masks a robust consensus on some of our most pressing issues. Substantial majorities of Americans want some form of universal health care. They believe much more should be done to combat climate change.  They want the rich to pay higher taxes. They see racial inequality as a significant problem. They support the right of workers to join unions. They hold positive views of immigration.  As Packer noted in his Atlantic piece, these majorities have been there for some time.  What’s new, he says, is an environment conducive to change.  Rather than a return to normal, the pain, turmoil and chaos of the past year may well be a launching pad for a shot at something far better than the old normal.

If this all sounds a bit obtuse, think of it this way:  For years, you’ve wanted to make changes in your house, knock out a wall and go for the open kitchen concept, attach a screened porch, upgrade the windows.  But life’s inertia and routine dominated, and none of it ever got done.  Then along comes a tornado. The house is destroyed.  A devastating trauma to be sure, but also a rebuilding opportunity that will finally execute those long-ignored design changes.  Welcome to the plastic hours.

Colorado Senator Michael Bennet used a different term to describe this dynamic. “I think we are at a hinge moment in history; it’s one of those moments that arises every 50 years or so,” he said. “We have the opportunity to set the stage for decades of progressive work that can improve the lives of tens of millions of Americans.”

There is, of course, nothing automatic about hinge moments or plastic hours. Dramatic change isn’t driven by a clock or a calendar. It takes smart, strategic leaders to seize those opportunities, to tap into a profoundly evolving environment in order to do what once couldn’t be done. There are strong signs that we are now in such an environment. The  crises of the past year – particularly the events in recent weeks – have left our normally static body politic in a rare state of flux.

For example:

  • Political Action Committees of most major corporations, including AT&T, Nike, Marriott, General Electric, Honeywell, Comcast and Verizon, have cut off all contributions to the 147 Republican members of Congress who voted against certifying the results of the presidential election.
  • Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell, after four years of marching in lockstep with Donald Trump, has broken with him and is reportedly working to block the former president from playing any role in the party.
  • Former top Trump administration officials are quietly lobbying for Trump’s impeachment.
  • Many leaders of the pro-Trump Capitol riot have disavowed their hero on social media because he eventually criticized their violence and did not pardon them.
  • QAnon, a bizarre, conspiracy-loving contingent in Trump’s base, was left morose and crestfallen when Biden became president because the Qs had been assured that that the Bidens, Obamas and Clintons would be executed at the last minute during Wednesday’s inauguration, somehow allowing Trump to get one more term.

That may not be exactly what Bob Dylan had in mind when he wrote The Times They Are A-Changin’.  Yet, for a demon leader, who since 2017, reigned supreme over his base and most Congressional Republicans, it’s a major transformation. 

This window of rebuilding from the twister of the past four years will not remain open long. Now is the time to act, with focused determination and agile grace. And with respectful compromise that retains the essence of the agenda for meaningful change. 

In other words, and with apologies to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

Between the dark of then and the light ahead,

When changes emerge to alter the power,

Comes a pause in our rhythmic thread,

That is known as the Plastic Hour.

DEMOCRACY DESECRATED BY DONALD ALMIGHTY’S MOB

For his End of Days’ performance, Donald Trump should have just gone to the middle of New York’s 5th Avenue and shot someone. As he predicted in 2016, it probably wouldn’t have altered his standing. But no, he had to incite a riotous takeover of the Capitol that terrorized Congress, left five people dead and a nation sick to its stomach.

Many of us spent four years wondering if there is any dastardly move this guy could make that would penetrate his cloak of invincibility. At long last we have our answer, although it comes without an ounce of solace. Let the record show that Trump’s instigation of a violent attempted coup d’état was, in fact, the bridge too far that we thought would never come.

The 45th president has been excoriated by members of his own staff and Cabinet. Influential – and not exactly left leaning – groups as divergent as the National Council of Churches, the National Association of Manufacturers and the Union of Concerned Scientists have called for Trump to resign or be removed from office. The House of Representatives appears ready to impeach him for a second time. Even worse for him, he’s been kicked off of Twitter.

Yet, he persists.  Two days after the Trump-inspired assault on the Capitol, the Republican National Committee sang his praises and encouraged his continued leadership of the party. According to social media chatter reported by The Washington Post, the president’s hard core base is so pleased with last week’s riot that they are planning an encore for the inauguration of Joe Biden, the guy they believe stole their hero’s office.

How in the world did we get to this point?  In large part, through faith. It wasn’t just the Donald’s lie about a stolen election that triggered this war. It was his army’s unwavering faith in the sanctity of Donald John Trump.  After stirring up his troops last Wednesday, this false prophet sent them off to invade the Capitol with these words of inspiration: “You will never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.” 

To be sure, many in that invading mob were veteran white supremacist agitators who were symbiotically using Trump as much as he was using them.  But others were clearly on a mission of faith. The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg reported that a portion of the pre-riot rally consisted of prayers conflating Jesus and The Donald. Goldberg wrote that one large group formed a circle and cheered when their leader said, “Give it up if you believe in Jesus,” but were even louder in their response to, “Give it up if you believe in Donald Trump.”   

This is not, in any way, a knock on religion. Abiding faith in a power greater than ourselves, or in principles and values that guide our lives, is as essential to our existence as the air we breathe and the food we eat. Yet, the slope between a faith that nourishes and enhances, and one that diminishes and endangers, is extremely slippery.  

Most organized religions – including Christianity, Judaism and Islam – recognize this conundrum through strict prohibitions against idolatry, the worshipping of other gods.  Think of it as an exclusive jurisdiction clause: Embrace only the one true God and the religion’s articles of faith with unquestioning acceptance, but don’t do that for anyone else.

Unfortunately, many in Trump’s base never got the false prophet  memo.  More than any other political figure in our lifetime, he has been worshiped by supporters who follow him on total faith, without doubt or question. His former press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump was called by God. Conservative radio host Wayne Allyn Root called him the “second coming of God,” and the “King of Israel.” Evangelical leaders Paula White, Robert Jeffress and Franklin Graham have repeatedly asserted that Trump’s presidency is divinely inspired and mandated.

Then there is the QAnon phenomenon. This growing contingent of hard core Trumpians believe the president has been divinely anointed to defend the world against a massive network of Satanic pedophiles in the Democratic party and the deep state. Many of the Capitol rioters were QAnon followers, including a woman who was killed in the melee.  

In his book, The Cult of Trump, cult expert Steven Hassan says Trump checks every box on the list of what it takes to have an effective cult.  “It’s a black-and-white, all-or-nothing, good-versus-evil, authoritarian view of reality,” he said in an interview with Vox. “And there’s a deliberate focus on denying facts in order to protect the leader.” One of the chapters in Hassan’s book is on malignant narcissism as a characteristic of destructive cult leaders.

To have faith is to accept without doubt, without question. In a religious context, faith has brought peace and comfort to millions of believers. It removes the angst of uncertainty over deeply profound questions about existence, including the ultimate: What happens when we die?”  

In the political context, however, doubt is an essential intellectual tool for drafting, synthesizing and reviewing ideas, policies, legislation and candidates. Truth and knowledge come from exploring doubts. Doubt begs the question, “Are you sure?” Doubt seeks more data, more opinions, more input. Used in moderation, it is also a healthy introspective tool. Who, besides our 45th president, has not indulged in self-doubt to become a better person?  

These past four years have taught us that the deity delusion is the of bane of democracy. Donald (“I alone can fix it”) Trump worships himself and believes in nothing outside of his own infallibility. Worse than that, he has an enormous contingent of venerating followers who accept his every word as gospel, and are willing to desecrate and destroy the citadel of our government along with the democracy that drives it.

As we evaluate the damage and devastation inflicted by the outgoing administration, as we make our list of needed repairs, let’s put this one at or near the top: Truth matters. 

And the road to truth is paved with doubt.