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More Than Just Four Years

I would say that we are in for a long four years, but it is going to be a whole lot harder than that. Whatever happens in the next election cycle, irreparable damage is being done to American democracy as we speak. Taking a look at the people Trump has gathered around him, it is sobering. For one thing, impeachment will not be enough. Even if we find a way to oust Trump we will still be stuck with his nominees, not to mention that now the world’s richest man has better access to sensitive Treasury payment systems than career employees. Now that Trump has a group of powerful acolytes who are in the business of remaking government, it is going to be really hard to put a stop to the damage being done.

This is not a moment to hunker down and wait. It is a moment for action. The Democratic Party is floundering after being unable to block a raft of dangerous nominees to the most important offices in the land. That isn’t to say that people aren’t trying. Time and again members of the committees demanded yes or no answers to yes or no questions. Time and again they received none. A good example–Pam Bondi hedging, unwilling to say that Biden won the 2020 election, constantly attempting to interrupt and talk about her “experiences” in Pennsylvania.

Clearly, there are a lot of Americans who are not fooled. This was a close election. The margins in the Senate are small and razor thin in the House. But enough people have been taken in to give Trump enough power to form an administration. The question is if, over time, voters will see that the people Trump is putting in power are not who they say they are.

For one thing, we can hope that voters will realize they did not elect Elon Musk. Hopefully, those who voted for Trump will see that he is abdicating his power to unelected oligarchs. Trump and Musk are taking a huge risk. Trump’s promises to wrest America from the deep state may yet blow up in his face. If their “reforms” cause something to go seriously wrong with the government on Trump’s watch, Trump will have trouble blaming someone else for the mess. But this is the hard way. If America goes down this road there will be a lot of destruction left in the wake of Trump’s administration. The greatest hope we have is that Trump’s administration will crash and burn without taking the entire American government down with it.

Musk is right–this is indeed a fork in the road for America. It will come down to the values of each individual acting collectively. It will be a test of American values. The people will have to decide whether or not they want their democracy, or if they are going to abdicate their role as citizens because of the false promises of a man and a movement attempting to destroy American democracy.

“Great Again” When?

Whatever has been is what will be, and whatever has been done is what will be done. There is nothing new beneath the sun!

Ecclesiastes 9:1 Stone Edition Tanach

Trump’s promise to “Make America Great Again” has one glaring flaw. When exactly was “Great?” Rather than restoring America to a former glory, he is refusing to learn from history. For instance, his hostility toward USAID. We take USAID for granted now, but it only became important as America struggled to win the Cold War. In the beginning, America believed in fighting the Cold War solely through military might. Then we learned the importance of soft power and the war of ideas–that the world viewing America as committed to human rights was as important as being a superpower.

Trump’s shocking and utterly unworkable idea to remove Palestinians has been tried before as well, several times. Ironically, one effort was made by USAID. They moved Palestinians to Jordan, hoping they would see themselves as Jordanian. It didn’t work. It became clear that the Palestinians were a people with a homeland and were not going to go willingly. They were displaced once and were not going to be displaced again. The world moved forward and came to understand that a two state solution was needed–except Trump, who insists on repeating history and telling the world it is something new.

Stocking a federal bureaucracy on the basis of loyalty isn’t a new idea either. It was called the “spoils system.” But the rest of us don’t want to return to the 1880’s, before the Pendleton Act established a merit based process for hiring civil servants. It would take a long time for the merit based system to take hold. But as it did people understood it as a step forward. Ironically, the main reason the merit based system was instituted was to increase efficiency.

Furthermore, it is not as if transgender people have never encountered laws that force them into the closet. Not so long ago people went to jail for dressing in “drag”. Cross-dressing was kept secret and if discovered lives would be ruined. It was accepted that gender dysphoria was a mental illness. Then we had the Stonewall Uprising, and the movement it sparked. Transgender people became recognized members of society.

The last two generations have brought negative changes as America has transformed socioeconomically. But this isn’t the first time America has faced such changes. During the Gilded Age, America transitioned from an agrarian economy to an industrial one. There were real problems, like child labor and tainted food. But America did not return to an agrarian economy. We passed child labor laws. Harvey Wiley and his Poison Squad laid the foundation for the FDA. America had to adapt to seismic changes; it could not return to the past.

We should be careful when we use the word “unprecedented” to describe Trump. There are precedents to his backward and dangerous ideas. They exist far back in the annals of the history he is repeating. Trump isn’t making America great again. He is rolling back hundreds of years of human progress, not returning America to a storied past.

A Way of Making America Poor Again

A good name is better than much fine oil.

Ethics of the Fathers Chapter 6 Mishna 7

Donald Trump is promising to make America rich again by using the power of the purse to intimidate our allies. In Trump’s over-simplified universe, all we have to do is intimidate people to get what we want. Since America is an economic and military power-house, it ought to be able to get everything it wants.

But there is another kind of capital that Trump is burning through with record speed–political capital–the good graces of our allies and the respect of our adversaries. For instance, we stand to lose a lot if we alienate Canada. Taking the attitude that Canada is a less rich country and therefore we will simply ignore Canada’s wants and needs, and disregard its interests, is foolhardy. Someday we will need the Canadians; or we will find that we would have been a hell of a lot better off for having their trust and cooperation on some matter of mutual importance. Why tear down this relationship? Trudeau may mollify Trump, but even now the Canadian people have begun to sour on America.

This reckless attitude toward the goodwill of our friends and allies is no different than someone who believes that they have an endless supply of money. Eventually, they end up bankrupt. Trump will burn through American political capital only to find we need something we cannot get simply by throwing our weight around.

Take Columbia–yes, we can throw our economic might in this small, poor country’s face, deciding that we should be able to have all we want simply because we are bigger and might makes right. But why? Why throw away a perfectly good relationship? It is ironic that Trump claims that the flow of drugs into the US is one of his top priorities and then deliberately alienates one of America’s most important allies in stopping the flow of illegal drugs. Sure we are bigger than Columbia, but that doesn’t mean they have nothing to offer us. The diplomatic relationship is still worth a lot. And Columbia knows that. A time will come when we need something from the Columbians that we cannot cajole them into providing. A moment will arise when the political capital we have invested in for years will prove invaluable to the interests of America, and will have a real-world impact on our everyday lives.

It’s almost impossible to make some other country share intelligence. The benefits of a stable economy in a troubled region are something that cannot be obtained by coercion. Aid and democracy efforts keep people from becoming migrants in the first place. Our interests extend beyond our borders.

There are things America needs and wants that bullying cannot afford us. There are more things for which bullying is the really hard way. I’m not asking anybody to be a bleeding heart liberal. Political capital is necessary. It’s about being pragmatic. Just as no one person has an endless supply of money, no one nation can address all of its interests by projecting intimidation.

Breathe Deep

We all need to chill. We need to think about what we are doing and why we are doing it. Like the MacCarthy era, or Salem 1692, this has all the classic characteristics of a witch hunt. We are allowing ourselves to be caught up in mass hysteria. There is a problem at the Southern border. It doesn’t mean immigrants are responsible for all our problems. No, we can’t just ignore illegal immigration. That too is a band-aid. It means we need to strike a balance between recognizing immigrants have much to offer and, yes, no country can function without a border. Yes, a small minority of people who cross the border illegally are truly criminals. Yes, the undocumented have committed a crime by crossing. Most are desperate.

Think about it; how much money would I have to pay you to walk through the Darien Gap? It is 60 miles and can take 10 days. The mud can literally swallow you whole. If you don’t dehydrate in the densest jungles on earth or die from exhaustion walking up steep mountains, you could get eaten by jaguars. It can cost as much as $500.

Despite this, there is a $30 million a year industry guiding the 400,000 people who crossed in 2024. One of the reasons the number is so high is efforts to stop illegal immigration. Mexico tightened its borders so Venezuelans could no longer get in by plane. 40,000 chose the Darien Gap instead. The Trump administration believes migrants living in fear of ICE will deter illegal immigration. If they weren’t afraid of the jaguars…

Are the cartels pedaling fentanyl terrorist organizations? I lost a friend to the opioid epidemic; no one can claim I am soft on drug dealers. But there is no invasion. Everybody has drug dealers; everybody struggles with illegal drugs crossing their border. A lot of the people in this “invasion” are unaccompanied minors–children. Most are families. Many of those children are escaping gangs. They want what we want, what all people want: a safe place to live, a way to make a living. They want the things people want because they are human.

It is appropriate to deport non-citizens who have committed serious crimes. But America has the world’s most sophisticated law enforcement; we can separate the sheep from the goats. We have too many native born citizens committing violent crimes to waste resources tracking down tax-payers whose only crime is being desperate enough to walk through a jungle in search of a better life.

Why exactly did undocumented workers rise to the forefront of the threats to America? Trump hypocritically pardons the Proud Boys and then says our undocumented co-workers and neighbors pose a threat. The most destructive aspect of Trump’s effort will be how it convinces federal agencies to take their eye off the ball of real threats to the nation–like the domestic terrorists he pardoned.

America had immigration problems before Trump. Now, it has all those problems and xenophobia.

Toxic to Democracy

There has been a lot of Democratic soul searching since Trump was reelected. But there is one thing that contributed to Trump’s reelection that Democrats logically could do nothing about–something that both women and many men have grown increasingly alarmed about for decades–toxic masculinity. For a long time now, people all over the world have watched as a destructive definition of manhood has overtaken American political culture. From Mark Zucherburg’s new lock to Dana White’s critical endorsement of Trump to Hulk Hogan’s shirt ripping and proclamations about “real Americans” at the Republican National Convention; Trump won the White House by convincing other men he was a “real man.” Toxic masculinity has become a threat to our democracy.

I am not surprised. Democracies aren’t built just on politics. They are built on a set of shared values. Values that are non-existent in the “manosphere.” People whose values revolve around the Ultimate Fighting Championship aren’t going to know anything about the most basic democratic principle of them all: solving conflict without using violence. This is the point of a democracy, and what makes a democracy a democracy.

There was a time, in my lifetime, when boys looked up to people like Joe Biden, when his achievements would inspire admiration. But increasingly young men look with disdain on men who show a willingness to solve conflicts through any other means but violence. A democratic society cannot maintain this forever. In order for a republic to function, its people must aspire to cooperate and find ways of resolving disputes other than through intimidation. Terry Gene Bollea (Hulk Hogan’s given name) may be a nice guy, but the kind of values his occupation espouses have no place in a diverse democracy that can function only when people agree to work in a cooperative manner with those with which they disagree. WWE may be good entertainment and a release for men; but kickboxing, pinning, submitting, and a general attitude of doing anything and everything to intimidate your opponent have no place in the White House. Hogan said it best himself at the Republican National Convention when he called the Trump-Vance ticket, “The best tag team ever.” referring to a WWE match in which teams compete.

Like the wrestlers that support him, Trump is a bully, constantly attempting to gain power through threat of force. The “tough guy” attitude that makes Trump so popular is also what makes him dangerous. And he now has the world’s greatest military power behind him.

But this problem is bigger than Trump’s presidency. As long as toxic masculinity endures, it will poison American democracy. Part of defeating Trumpism over the long haul will mean finding healthy role models for young men–men who don’t solve problems through violence. American democracy will not be truly safe until being a “real man” means wisdom, integrity, hard work, determination, and a belief in the power of the pen and the spoken word. This, not Hulk Hogan, is what it means to be a “real American.”

Adapt or Die?

We know the devastation of the Los Angeles wildfires. Some blame government agencies for insufficiently resourcing fire departments. They are approaching the problem from the wrong perspective. Yes, more money should have gone to fire departments because of climate change. But how much money does any one municipality have to spend on “adaptation” or “mitigation” efforts? LA has some of the best fire-fighting apparatuses in the world–with helicopters comparable to military aircraft and pilots with experience in night time combat flying. The Santa Ana winds downed these elite helicopters, and even the most experienced pilots. Without aircraft, firefighters tried to contain fires moving with hurricane force winds by hand. The Santa Ana winds would have overrun the best resourced fire department. When it came to the fires, there was no way to adapt to climate change. People died.

The risks of wildfire are well known to the people of the affected communities. While many people have lost everything through no fault of their own, the environmental movement has been raising alarm bells about building in fire prone areas for decades. Not all, but some of these homes, many of the very rich, should never have been built in the first place. If the municipal fire departments resources are insufficient, they need to not spend them trying to save the homes of people who logically made poor choices–who knew the risk of building in a fire prone area in an era of climate change. Although I feel for the people who have lost everything, this is a man-made, not “natural” disaster. For years, we have known that climate change was coming, we knew it would bring wildfires, and we knew what places would be prone to wildfires. People built anyways.

Rather than being able to adapt, communities like Altedena, and the people who live in them, may die. The winter rains failing and the Santa Ana winds being stronger may become the new normal. Exactly how often can this fire-prone area experience this kind of devastation? Especially when we consider not only the homes lost and the incredible emotional and psychological toll taken, but the disruption of the economy: price gouging, looting, an exacerbation of a housing crisis, the many, mostly immigrant, businesses who relied on these communities as a market for services from house cleaning to lawn care.

And there is the most obvious long term disruption–the insurance market. There seems to be no good way to stabilize the housing insurance market. One way or another, whether through direct payments to their policyholders or an assessment from Cal-fire, insurance companies in California are facing huge financial losses, and are withdrawing from California.

Today, President Trump pulled America out of the Paris Climate Accords. He says it will save $1 trillion dollars. Also today, the National Weather Service again issued its highest alert for fire danger. In the end, we will not be able to adapt to climate change. We will have to live with its destruction. And people will die.

The Limits of Martyrdom

Trump seems to have gotten away with it. However, over time and with careful pressure there is hope yet that Trump’s legal troubles–and some kind of accountability–will follow him into his next term. There is hope that the accumulation of legal problems will undercut Trump’s real or perceived mandate to govern. Eventually, something will stick. Trump has vulnerabilities or he wouldn’t be fighting every attempt to have the truth come out.

Trump displayed his weakness when he felt he had to go after a legacy news agency for misstating the difference between “sexual abuse” and “rape” in reference to E. Jean Carroll’s lawsuit. His need to parse words, and to defame Carrol, shows that he is not as invulnerable as he wants us to believe. His moral troubles may prove more resilient than his purely legal ones. E Jean Carrol is still bravely moving forward with her suit. Her’s is perhaps the most important because it calls Trump out for what he is–morally bankrupt and concerned only with escaping accountability.

Trump has famously claimed that he could shoot someone in broad daylight and get away with it. But that doesn’t mean he can do whatever he wants for any length of time. Eventually, what he does will catch up with him. Granted, there may be a group of people surrounding him that are so fanatically dedicated to him that nothing will cause them to change their minds. But the people who got him into the white house were not that fanatically devoted to him. They gave into his lies about how he could and would improve their lives. Trump’s claim, for instance, that he would lower the price of groceries. This is actually an economic impossibility. Deflation is the worst thing that can happen to an economy. What needs to happen is for real wages to rise enough for incomes to catch up to prices. This will occur on its own–Trump or no Trump.

So, there is a group of people with whom Trump is very vulnerable. The question is how to reach them–or maybe what to reach them with. It is a matter of finding what matters to the right people at the right time. And that takes really understanding why people voted for Trump in the first place. It takes getting your head around why all of this man’s immorality did not disqualify him in the minds of average American voters.

One thing is for sure, an unconditional discharge isn’t going to help; it is a major setback. It puts to rest something that should have followed Trump into the White House. But even with an unconditional discharge, Trump is still a felon. And we do have a report by the special council saying that he would have been convicted. That is not nothing. And it is telling what lengths Trump has gone to to suppress it. It shows us that there are limits to his ability to cast himself as a martyr oppressed by the deep state.

What to do about Kash Patel?

Given Trump’s pick to head the FBI, it is clear we are in for a long four years. The most important thing is to get ready to fight. But fight how? What are progressives–and for that matter conservatives and moderates who care about democracy–going to do about this sycophantic lackey?

Much attention has been given to the prospect of intensive litigation, and that has its place. But litigation alone will not be enough with a Supreme Court stacked with Trump appointees. Litigation will be hard when the opposition knows that if they appeal to the highest court in the land they will win, and progressive organizations will be out tremendous amounts of money on failed legal efforts.

That isn’t to say we should all throw our hands up and sink into despair. Trump is unwilling and incapable of delivering on promises to fix what is broken in the American government. Instead, MAGA embodies dysfunction: hyperpartisanship, an unwillingness to go about the business of government, caring about one’s own power above what is best for one’s constituents, gridlock. This is MAGA’S Achilles heel.

Patel will never deliver on his promises to reform. Instead, he will compound the dysfunction he says he is prepared to eliminate. When it becomes clear that reform is not a part of his agenda, we need to be there to make sure the world, and I mean the whole world, knows it. With the American people distracted with polarization, international pressure may become a critical component of any resistance against a second Trump presidency.

It begins now. As the nomination process moves forward, it is abundantly clear that “reform” is a smokescreen. We know Patel exists solely to carry out Trump’s bidding. The question is how to convey that message in a meaningful and convincing way. This sounds simple enough, but in actuality it will prove to be very difficult, demanding work. But it can and must be done. The point is to start the conversation and start the conversation as quickly as possible.

We need to frame the argument in simple terms–MAGA and Patel are a future disaster for the functioning of the American government. Eventually, Patel will prove inept. Patel will weaken the ability of the FBI to do its job. He will create chaos, or worse yet so distract the Bureau as to make it impossible for them to do their job. An institution Americans both rely on and take for granted will be hobbled. Patel’s “reforms” are going to further weaken an agency the American people rely on in their everyday lives. When the Bureau just isn’t there, people will think twice about Trump’s promises.

Right now, the American electorate is distracted with a disconnect between what the numbers and economists say and the realities of people’s economic lives. But they are taking their institutions for granted. When the real-world consequences of an appointment like Patel’s hit, many Americans will begin to regret their vote.

A Question of Character

Is Trump a fascist? This seems to be the perennial question. But it is not the most important question. Time and again, I am struck by how, if you stop and think, the conflicts around Trump have nothing to do with ideology. It is important to not treat Trump as an ideolog. That isn’t to say that he isn’t racist and transphobic. It’s to say that his bigotry is not part of a cohesive set of arguments. It is his personal prejudices combined with what he thinks is politically salient at any one given time and place. His ideology is whatever he thinks it needs to be at that moment. If we can hold out any hope for the next four years it is that Trump has said he believes anything and promised to do anything that mobilizes his base in the moment. When it comes time to make good on those promises, it may prove harder than he thinks. More importantly, the time may come when he has to prove that he truly believes the things he has said he believes. It may become clear to those people whose ideas he has pledged loyalty to that he believes in nothing but his own desire for power.

People say they like Trump’s policies even as they don’t like his character. This is a cop out. Character is central to democracy. Actually, it’s impossible to have a properly functioning democracy when citizens and representatives lose sight of the fact that leaders in a democracy need to have certain moral characteristics. No amount of checks and balances will protect a democracy if an entire party, or half of the electorate, abdicate their responsibility to ensure they support someone who holds basic democratic values. This isn’t to, as they say, “blame the electorate.” It is to point out that something has gone fundamentally wrong with the way America selects its leaders. In our hyper-partisan environment, on both sides, character has taken a back seat to political litmus tests. People have come to care only about a handful of divisive issues and not the big picture–the person they are helping to elect. Political “nose holding” has become a way of life at the expense of American democracy.

What is at stake is just how screwed up the character of Trump and those that surround him really are. Take Hegseth, for instance. What is most relevant is not what philosophical approach he is going to take as Secretary of Defense. He is dangerous because he doesn’t have the character to serve his country. He faces serious allegations of rape, and, perhaps even more importantly, has supported armed service personnel convicted of war crimes. They can talk all they want, but in the end MAGA is a movement that cares nothing about the character of the people it sends to the government that is supposed to be serving the people. And that is just plain wrong. It is undemocratic. Since when did character not count?

When Will Climate Change Hit Home?

We have all seen the devastation–in the same place twice in two weeks. One member of a mobile home community–who is thinking of just picking up stakes and leaving–said it best, “Planet earth is really messed up right now.” Home insurance has sky-rockted. People who don’t live anywhere near a hurricane still have difficulty getting it at all, much less getting it at a price they can afford. FEMA is beginning to be stretched thin. It is having to pull people from other agencies because it doesn’t have enough people with the right expertise to handle not only back-to-back hurricanes but a host of climate related disasters.

And, it is not as if we do not know it is climate related. Scientist after scientist, climate model after climate model, not only predicted this would happen but can show how it is happening now.

And it is not as if hurricanes are the only evidence. I live in Iowa, quintessential rural Midwest, a place that is not supposed to be hit hard by climate change. But climate change has reached here, too, far away from hurricanes. My state has some of the most fertile soils in the world–and no rain to go with them.

My mother is, in some sense, a climate refugee. When my family moved into my childhood home in the very early 80’s there were some issues with flooding. The entire neighborhood sat in a floodplain. A dyke had been built. Later a dam was added. But over time flooding became a yearly or several times a year occurrence. We were having once-in-50-year-events every other year. The historic floods of 2008 were the last straw in what had been a series of catastrophic floods. Flood insurance simply no longer made sense. FEMA bought everybody out. The houses were torn down and Mother Nature took back what was her’s. It’s a green space now. Ours wasn’t the only neighborhood in my home town to meet this fate.

We all need, the world over, to start facing economic facts. It is estimated that the two recent hurricanes will cost $100 billion. We can’t afford it. Certainly we cannot afford it every other week. Difficult decisions about who can keep their homes will have to be made. Consequences will be felt. We cannot continue to delude ourselves into believing that climate change will not change our lives.

And, yet, in the middle of one of the tightest elections in recent memory, climate change is still not front and center. Not even with the devastation of back to back hurricanes has climate change become a top issue. Not that other issues are not important–reproductive rights, the war in Ukraine, the Middle East conflict. But as significant as these issues are, none pose so much an existential threat to the world as a whole as climate change.

So where are the intense debates about what to do next? Where are the prizes for scientific innovations that could get us to net zero faster? Where is holding corporate America to account? Where are the demands for systemic change? All of these exist. But they aren’t the first thing the candidates are talking about. Why?

Denial is a funny thing. Certainly there is the out and out denial that we are all used to. When it comes to some people, It is hard to think of any facts that they will ever accept. They are too fundamentally oriented to reject science. But there is a different, more insidious kind of denial. A belief that, “Yes, climate change may be important, but it is not as important as the cost of groceries and gas.”

This kind of denial can be seen in Boston’s “Innovation District”, which is soon to be an “Inundation District.” Boston has put $20 billion into seaport districts located on land built from landfill to just above high tide in the 19th century. Despite repeated problems with historic tidal flooding and storm surges the development goes on. More and more people are raising their voices, trying to convince their local government to accept the reality of climate change. Still, the building continues without regard to sea level rise; even as many residents can see the effects of climate change directly in front of them on a daily basis.

There is really only one answer, and that is to convince people that global warming will raise the price of groceries and gas. When worldwide food shortages spur inflation and the stores have no oranges because of climate-related citrus greening disease; when the cost of gas goes up because oil refineries flood during hurricanes even though they were built outside the 100-year floodplain–governments will be able to insulate the public from the effects of climate change only so long. Only by allowing people to feel the effects of climate change in their everyday lives can we make true progress. Now is that moment for governments to tell their people to connect the dots, to tell them in stark terms how climate change will and is affecting them personally, and not to shield them from it. It is a matter of there being a leader who has the moral courage to step forward and say it. It is a matter of what it will take for climate change to really hit home.