Author Archives: Nicole Sanders

With the nation focused on the fight over a Covid-19 relief bill that Republicans maintain is fiscally irresponsible, it is important that Americans not become distracted from the greatest crisis facing the Biden administration, and ultimately the country as a whole.   Almost as soon as the event happened, radicalized Republicans came up with yet more conspiracy theories to explain away an attempted insurrection. Even the disruption of a peaceful transfer of power is not enough to force real change and convince the Republican party to split with bigoted conspiracy theorists. As America impeaches Donald Trump again, we cannot ignore the movement behind the man.    

Case in point–Marjorie Taylor Greene, a woman who campaigned on assassinating the speaker of the house.  Now Green is trying to distance herself from things said in the past; but, those statements are just as unacceptable as they would be if she said them today.  The reality of the situation is that the Republican party is refusing to truly separate themselves from beliefs that are beyond the pale. It is an issue of political calculus, pure and simple. 

This moment calls for not only condemnation but action. Taking this woman off committees is not enough.  It is an insult to American democracy that the Republicans allow this woman to be in congress at all.    

  Until Republicans do what they need to do in order to remain a party truly dedicated to democratic principles, the duty to maintain the norms that any democratic law-making body needs falls to the Democrats.  Lawmakers not having to be afraid of other lawmakers must be a given.  Americans cannot allow the Republican party to succeeded in changing the rules.  

 Biden needs to keep moving forward–this is clear.  However, unity is not possible when lawmakers are forced to live in fear of other lawmakers.  How exactly is America going to move forward when it is threatened by a movement that promotes insurrection?   In the end, words matter.  The Republican party want us to believe otherwise.  The fight to remove this woman isn’t anywhere close to over.

If anybody thought it was over when Trump left the white house, congresswoman Marjoire Taylor Greene shows us otherwise.  As footage of her harassing survivors of the worst school shooting in American history surfaced, Republicans apparently believe that someone who has bizarre and dangerous conspiracy theories has the right to sit on the Education Committee.  This woman even being allowed to remain in the senate is an outrage.  

Only a minority of Americans embrace extremist agendas.  But the majority must stand up and say that these are not appropriate ideas for any lawmaker to have.  I don’t claim that this woman wasn’t elected in a free and fair election.  But, the views of the people of one district should not and cannot overrule basic norms.  Throughout history, there have been plenty of popular people that America regretted not holding accountable.  Joe MaCharty springs to mind.

Now is the time to build a consensus for a return to democratic norms and values.  America needs to have rules in order to function properly, any democracy does.  And those rules and norms must apply to everyone equally, no matter how popular they are in their home district.  

Contrary to the hypocritical misinformation from the alt-right, it is they who have abandoned rule of law, they who have trampled on people’s constitutional rights, and they who are traitors and treasonous.  The Republicans have had ample opportunity to come to grips with the problems in their party.  They have no right to look at Joe Biden or anybody else, including people in their own party, and say you have to work with someone who refuses to accept basic facts–someone with the kind of character that would behave with no regard for a national tragedy.  These simply are not ideological issues, they are issues of maintaining a healthy democracy.  No one, of any political persuasion has the right to use their elected office to promote dangerous reactionary ideas that disrespect American diversity and fly in the face of America’s stated values.  There is a place for ideas like senator Greene’s–she has first amendment rights–but that place is not in government.  Let us hope that the Biden administration is willing and able to take this woman and her fellow Republicans on, head on.  Of course, Biden needs to work across the aisle.  However, none of us should ever a have a policy of appesement when it comes to bigoted conspricacy theories.  Nor should we with people who obviously do not want to understand what it means to be a representative in a democracy.

Trump’s farewell address is a long list of perceived policy victories, but an assault on reality.  At the heart of Trump’s worldview are dangerous conspiracies.  Sugar-coated with American exceptionalism, his claims are not in touch with the historical realities of his administration.  Trump’s manipulation is to tell his followers over and over again what they want to hear, what they (and perhaps all of us in some ways) wish were true. But, it rings hollow if you listen very hard.  The vast majority of Trump’s “policy victories” are mistakes, mistakes that brought about real problems for the nation.  Take the killing of Sulaimani.  Trump touts this as a win for America.  In reality, it permanently complicates US-Iranian relations, as demonstrated by the promise of retaliation on the anniversary of Sulamani’s death.  Not to mention the fact that the United Nations has declared the attack a violation of international law. And that Iraqi government is permanently angry about an assault on its sovereignty.  The president boasts of how many African-American and Latinx people saw their wages increase under his presidency, and then insights white supremacists.  He claims to have fixed NAFTA (which needed to be done) and then frays America’s relationship with its major trading partners.  As a new administration takes over, everyone must come to understand that the victories that Trump boasts about were really failures.  And failure is something Trump never admits to.  Trump takes failure and creates the illusion of success; it is the hallmark not only of his presidency but of the majority of his life. 

The most important task for the Biden administration is to create an alternative narrative from the one that Trump uses to explain away the destruction left behind from his presidency.  Let us hope Biden is up to the task, and that he fully understands the urgency needed in these circumstances.  Biden will need to take the conspiracy head on, without pulling punches.  He will need to confront people, both voters and elected members of congress, who are willing to rewrite the history of the Trump administration even as this dark chapter in American history closes.  If in the name of achieving unity Biden cannot, or worse yet will not do this, the nightmare of the Trump presidency and terrible ideas that created that nightmare will haunt America for a very long time.

On the 6th there was an assault on the capitol, but it came about because of an assault on reality.

It is good to hear, at last, that there are growing rifts within the Republican party.  I say this not out of spite.  I hope good things for the Republican party.   More than anything I hope it recognizes that if it fails to purge itself of Trumpism it is doomed to fall apart. And, everyone anyplace on the political spectrum knows that would ultimately be a bad thing, if for no other reason than without a Reblupican party there will be no check on Trump from the right.  The troubling part is that it took an attempted insurrection to make the tough conversations within the GOP happen. 

As Frank Bowan recently pointed out, the real impeachable offense was not the president’s incitement of insurrection, but his attempt to discredit the election results in the first place.  Unfortunately, very few Republicans are willing to admit this, no matter how obvious it should be.  It will take the Republicans admitting the obvious, and confronting Trump and his supporters with the fact that the attempt to overturn the election by the president is the real problem. That problem must be addressed if the country is to heal and move forward, and be truly safe.  

The capitol is now a “green zone”.  Governors across the country are scared.  It won’t stop until enough people within the Republican party say the obvious–Donald Trump has no right to continue to claim that a free and fair election wasn’t free and fair, especially as the country he is sworn to protect is spiraling into armed conflict and chaos.  Let us hope that there are enough Republicans willing to do the right thing at this point and at least make it clear that Trump will never have the bully pulpit that they has so far afforded him.  That, at least, will be the beginning of setting right all that has gone so wrong under Trump.

Meanwhile, more American’s than ever are dying of Covid-19 and the Trump administration has botched the role-out of the vaccine, simply because no one at the top is paying attention.  Many governors now regret they even bothered to listen to Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services. Governors can’t even trust the people at the top to know what they are talking about.  This isn’t the way Americans should have to live.  Now is a moment when progressives need to put aside partisanship and support Republicans who are standing up to Trump, even as we may be angry that change hasn’t come soon enough.  However, now, in many ways, is already too late.

“Jesus 2020,” that was one of the banners waved by insurrectionists as they stormed the capital.  America now faces “called white supremacists” a dangerous mixture of white nationalism and white Evangelical theology that threatens the very bedrock of American democracy. As the events at the capitol force us to reconsider American identity at a critical juncture in American history, the role that white conservative Evangelical Christians in the storming of the capitol is a stark warning about how removed from democratic ideals some in this minority have become.  There is a place for all kinds of Christianity in America, but when people arm themselves in the name of any God people must step up and make it clear that that is not acceptable.  

I am not surprised that white Evangelical Christinity is morphing into forms of nationalism.  There has always been a dangerous element of this group that thinks in ways incompatible with democracy. Fundamentally, America is not a Christian nation.  It is the most religiously diverse nation that has ever existed.  As a Jew by choice I have long felt that some Christians are seeking to exclude me, even as I am a person of faith.  Some claim America for their religion alone; they have demonstrated that they are unwilling to live within a democracy that belongs to all of America and not anyone’s God or gods.  

I live in a small Iowa town, not exactly a bastion of American diversity.  Yet in my community there is a strong Conservative and Reform Jewish presence.  There is enough of an Islamic presence that there is a hallal section in the local Wal-Mart.  There are Sikhs and Unitarians and a small but important group of modern wiccans. Not to mention a whole variety of legitimately Christian congregations unwilling to exclude me because of my religion or sexual orientation.  It is wrong for any group to stand up and say that their God should lead the entirity of the country.  Especially a God that, according to them, is ready to send me to hell no matter how good a person I am.  Is this kind of thinking really American?

Now is the moment for those of us who really do believe in diversity to say why Jesus will never be a candidate.  No one who thinks this way is really in touch with the nature of diverse multi-ethnic democracy.  There needs to be space for more than just one minority with exclusionary beliefs.  The reality is that the confusion between one group’s deity and democratic governance has always been dangerous.  As we reflect on this assault on democracy, it should be clear to us just how dangerous blurring that line really is, and why those ideas must be countered more strongly.

People all over the world feel deep sadness at the violent takeover of the capitol.  All over the world, and hopefully even among Trump supporters, what can be only be described as grief and trauma were felt as Capitol Police were unable to effectively guard the sacred institution of democracy and the people who make that democracy work.  What troubles me most is how many people were surprised, the number of people who did not understand the reality of who Donald Trump is.  

At this critical moment Americans must turn their attention to the the scariest part of the siege of the capitol–the people willing to follow.  Seldom if ever in American history has an individual created such a grip on people.  So strong that they would brazenly attack the symbol of American democracy, claiming to be defending their country, screaming “USA” as they drug a police officer, just trying to do his job, into their mob and beat him while he was down, literally.  Strong enough for a citizen to kill a police officer with a fire extinguisher, and do in the name of voter fraud that never happened.

If anything good could possibly come from something so heinous, it is the realization that one man and the mob he controls cannot dictate to the whole world what norms and mores ought to be.  The question now is “Will it be enough?”  Will this, at last, cause enough people to stand up and say this man and the beliefs he represents must be excised from American democracy and political consciousness?  Will the right people come to realize that Donald Trump represents America at its worst; an America antithetical to all of its stated values?  Can we dislodge Trumpism and hopefully prevent Trump from trying to return?   

There is much work to do.  What happened at the capitol is ultimately a symptom of a broader disease.  If we want to say that the lives lost and the trauma inflicted mean something, it is that the disease cannot be ignored, that there is no one left with any excuse to go on supporting this man. Most importantly, the party of the man who called on the better angles of our nature cannot remain the party of the man who has called forth one of the greatest evils America has ever known.  Americans must stand up together to denounce it.

Listening to Trump railing against an honest conservative Republican for refusing to entertain his conspiracy theories, I was struck that even as Trump the man recedes, “Trumpism” is clearly here to stay.   After more than 50 lawsuits Trump isn’t backing down or walking away; neither can anyone who cares about the future of America–young, old, black, white, brown, progressive and conservative must recognize that the ideologies and attitudes Donald Trump represents are a cancer on American democracy.  Decency, respect, a willingness to find consensus and compromise; none of this has anything to do with ideology or party affiliation.  

We all have differences of opinions, but that isn’t an excuse for conspiracy theories.  If Trump wants to ask questions about voter fraud, he and his allies should, and have, been allowed to do so.  But to so blatantly disrespect honest election officials in a way so reminiscent of McCarthyism is dangerous and wrong.  It cannot and should not be tolerated by anyone, of any political persuasion.  

The argument that one can support Donald Trump’s policies even if you don’t support Doanld Trump the man just falls flat.  Donald Trump’s only policy is the acquisition of power for Donald Trump the man.  I understand that so many of us are frustrated with business as usual in Washington, and that that is what Trump has latched onto, but it’s not an excuse to tolerate the bullying of an honest person doing his Constitutional duty.  Whether Trump won Georgia isn’t the point.  How long are the American people going to stand for a person distorting reality to suit his own self-serving political motivations?  The founders realized that there is something in all of us that wants power for power’s sake, that’s why they created checks and balances.  But, the system only works when enough people are willing to work to make the system work.  It doesn’t work automatically.  This is not a question of one man, or even one movement, this is a question of what it means to be American.  The threat is existential; and it is real.  Ultimately, it is simple: do we want an America in which there are rules for everyone, or do we want an America where potentially everybody can make up the rules as they go along. 

This moment of crisis is an opportunity for those of us who sincerely care about the health of American democracy.  As Biden prepares his cabinet, rightly turning his focus away from Trump himself to the tragic state of affairs in America and in the world that have come about because of Trump’s selfish desire for power; it is important for progressives to seize this opportunity, to develop a deep commitment, knowing that if we do not act now, and act decisively, Trumpism will be back, even as Donald Trump begins to fade.  The Biden presidency is a partial win, a first step, but the fight absolutely cannot end here.   
 

I am a self-described progressive, and I refuse to apologize for it. As I reflect on the disappointing finish of the democrats in an election like no other in history, I am thinking long and hard about what it means to be a “conservative.” How do we make sense of a poll that says that 70% of people who identify as republican believe conspriacy theories about voter fraud? How exactly are we expected “to try to work with” people who believe that prominent Americnas progressives are part of a pediophilic Satanic cult? Why does the Biden compaign feel they have to win handedly in order to have a sitting president concede respectfully? What does this say about the state of American democracy?

As I sat and listened to Trump’s conspriacy theories, I was taken back to a time when being conservative was used as an excuse to undermine democracy. Years ago when I was a young member of the League of Women Voters I got into a heated discussion with someone who self-described as “very conservative.” At the time there was a mental health care crisis in my state. There were hundreds of people waiting to get desparately ill loved ones into care. He saw a role for the private sector. I wanted government to invest. We clashed. But I should have counted myself lucky. There were things this self-descirbed “conversative” did not do. He did not try to tell me that the problem was a hoax invented by the fake media and the deep state. He didn’t argue the science of mental illness, and when I was the one tending to want to talk over, he did something that I can imagine few “conservatives” do today. He stepped back and listened. He told me he cared. He used the word compromise. We can, and should, always make room at the table for this kind of conservative at the table. He was a good person; he wanted the best for the citizens who elected him. He was a true public servant.

It would be wrong to demonize Trump’s supporters. It would be even more wrong not to do some soul-searching about why so many Americans are willing to support a man who is so clearly antithetical to America’s stated values. It is time for progressives to ask the question of what we haven’t done right that this man has so much a grip on so many people. As an Iowan, I can see what this election tells us about the neglect of rual America by both parties. But, fundamentally, Trump’s supporters are wrong. Part of citizenship is knowing a conspriracy theory when you hear one, demanding honesty, and speaking truth to power. These are not “conservative” or “progressive” issues. They are issues of good governance and political responsibility. If America is to truly heal, it will begin when “conservative” is no longer an excuse to undermine democracy.

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

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The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

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• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
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You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus your own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.