Category History

In the matter of the new-but-same-old president, I have a few thoughts; let the sharing begin

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

Presidential inaugurations are historic moments. I watch them all, even when it is a president I didn’t vote for, and I’ll watch this one, too. Here are a few things I’ll be thinking about.

The man who will take the oath of office as president of the United States this Monday has the support of only one-third of Americans who were eligible to vote in the last election.  The other two-thirds either voted for someone else (most of them for Kamala Harris) or didn’t vote at all.  According to data gathered by the University of Florida Election Lab, and neatly organized for even easier reading here on Wikipedia, the 156.3 million Americans who voted in November are less than 64% of all those Americans who were eligible to vote in that election.  The majority of citizens who did cast ballots, 77.3 million, voted for Donald Trump; that number of people is only 31.59% of the Americans who were eligible to vote in that election.  To Trump’s credit, there have been only three winners of presidential elections since 1980 (the period covered by this research) who got a higher percentage of votes from among all those eligible: Joe Biden in 2020 (33.78%, from 81.2 million voters), Barack Obama in 2008 (32.58%, 69.4 million votes) and Ronald Reagan in 1984 (32.47%, 54.4 million voters).

The hardest truth, I think, is this: 88.3 million Americans who were eligible to vote…didn’t.  Put another way, of those who had the right and privilege to participate in their own governance, 36% did not…either could not vote for some reason, or could not be bothered to.  That’s more than who voted for Trump, more than who voted for Harris.  Even though that is still the second-best participation rate in the period studied, trailing only the 2020 election.

Some of the youngest folks who voted this past November would have been as young as 10 when Trump was elected the first time, so they wouldn’t have been paying attention to the 2016 campaign or maybe remember some of those highlights. I found this handy reminder list on Twitter, and share it here as a public service.

Although the announcement came from TFG (now meaning “the felon guy” rather than “the former guy”), I do not believe for one instant that the man who eight years ago lied about the crowd size at his first inauguration to protect his fragile ego is the same guy who now made the very sensible decision to bring this year’s ceremony indoors to protect people from the cold.  In fact it is the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies which plans and executes these events, and I can completely see it not taking public credit for this choice so as not to be seen as bigfooting an incoming president, especially this one.  I’m not buying that the guy who four years ago encouraged Americans to risk their safety to commit violence at the Capitol as part of his attempt to overturn an election is the same guy who is looking out for others when he says “I don’t want to see people hurt, or injured, in any way. It is dangerous conditions for the tens of thousands of Law Enforcement, First Responders, Police K9s and even horses, and hundreds of thousands of supporters that will be outside for many hours on the 20th”.  Also, I think it should be “it will be dangerous conditions” rather than it is.  And also just by the way, who taught this nitwit the rules of capitalization?

— George Conway (@gtconway.bsky.social) 2025-01-17T18:54:25.940Z

It was disheartening to see the tenuous relationship with the concept of “truth” exhibited by some of the Trump Cabinet nominees during confirmation hearings.  To be fair, Republicans and Democrats are just as adept as MAGA persons are when it comes to the kabuki dance of non-answer answers to pointed questions, finding it a preferred alternative to perjury.  I accept the validity of politely refusing to provide a speculative answer to a hypothetical, or for judicial nominees to refuse to express an opinion about a case that might come before them some day.  But to say, for example, that some of Pam Bondi’s responses strained credulity is to really streeeetch the definition of “strained.”  Am I really expected to believe that Bondi did not/does not know certain facts of life, as reported by Dahlia Lithwick at Slate:

  • Did she hear Donald Trump’s telephone call to Georgia’s secretary of state asking him to find more votes? No, she never listened to it.
  • Did she hear Trump’s comments about prosecuting Liz Cheney? She never heard that.
  • Does she know about Trump’s pledge to prosecute Jack Smith? She does not.
  • His threat to go after Merrick Garland? No idea.
  • What does she think of Kash Patel’s much-vaunted enemies list? Oh. Did he say that on TV?
  • Patel’s threats to shutter the FBI? She doesn’t know.
  • Pardons for those convicted for the Jan. 6 insurrection? She dare not judge a matter that may come before her.
  • And did Trump lose the 2020 election? Biden is the president.
  • No really, did Trump win the 2020 election? She saw some STUFF on the ground in Pennsylvania.You have NO idea.
  • What does she know beyond a shadow of a doubt? There was a “peaceful transition” after the 2020 election.

Or her flat-out refusal to acknowledge that a part of the law is in fact a part of the law:

Padilla: Will you defend birthright citizenship as the law of the land?Bondi: I will study birthright citizenshipPadilla: You're asking to be considered for Attorney General and you still need to study the 14th Amendment of the Constitution?

— FactPost (@factpostnews.bsky.social) 2025-01-15T18:29:45.201Z

I really wish that in cases like this senators would at least stand up for themselves and the prerogatives of the Senate even if they won’t call bullshit on behalf of their constituents or their country. Some day, when a nominee refuses to answer a direct question in these ways, I would love the senator to respond by saying “Thank you. The lack of candor displayed by your refusal to respond to my question, and your refusal to participate in this Constitutionally-mandated procedure in good faith, means I will not vote to confirm your nomination and I urge my colleagues to do the same. Thank you for coming.”

TikTok

— Nick Anderson – political cartoonist (@andertoon.bsky.social) 2025-01-17T22:16:24.157Z

The truth shall set you free – Episode 2

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

Maybe this really isn’t very complicated at all.  Maybe, a growing number of Americans don’t trust the mainstream news media because they don’t like what they see and hear and read, and they don’t understand what journalism is supposed to do.  I first encountered this phenomenon as a journalist way back at the beginning, by which I mean about 1980.

As a kid I somehow understood that the “news” I read in the newspaper and heard and saw on radio and television was intended to inform and educate me about what was happening in the world, not to promote any certain politicians or favored views of the world.  And that’s not to say that news didn’t (or doesn’t) cast some politicians and views of the world favorably, if you consider the ones who were not in the news in the first place for accusations of law-breaking and dirty dealing.  Watergate happened when I was in high school – both the crimes and the reporting that uncovered the crimes – and Woodward-and-Bernstein were making “investigative journalist” a career goal for more and more college students, although that’s not specifically what attracted me…I was looking for an alternative after I decided, as someone who really didn’t enjoy college, that it would take too long to go to law school.  Later I realized I made a mistake turning my nose up at “college” the way I did.  Later I also came to realize that all good journalism involves “investigating” and the term of art was more a promotional pitch than an accurate description of a exclusive branch of the practice.

After having worked for a year on the college newspaper as a reporter and editor (followed by life-affirming experiences as a lunch-rush sandwich maker in a fast food restaurant and then overnight cashier in a self-serve gas station), I got a part-time job in the news department at a local country music radio station.  They needed someone else to cover school board meetings since their reporter was the daughter of the school board president, and someone to write and anchor short on-the-hour newscasts on weekend afternoons and evenings.   That’s what had me on the air reading the first UPI bulletin about the assault on Congressman Leo Ryan and his traveling party at Port Kaituma in Guyana before the news the next day of the massacre at Jonestown.  Before long I was covering city hall and a municipal election while still a student, then going full-time after graduation.  Nine months later I took a job at another station in town (for more money) as a reporter and anchor, lucky to have a terrific friend and mentor there (Olin Murrell, the late musician you may have heard of) who kept my focus on a clear and fair presentation of the stories that made up the daily news.

Olin also hosted the live evening call-in talk show on that station, and late in 1980 he gave me a chance to try it out: be the ringmaster who conducted interviews and managed an open discussion of any topic, able to articulate my opinion and be devil’s advocate with callers as they expressed their opinions, so as to generate a discussion and hold the attention of an audience.  A few years ago I characterized my outlook at that time as “left of center but not crazy; I had more than one caller who complimented me for being funny and so reasonable…for a liberal.”

It was those conversations with a caller named Irene that were the first direct exposure I can remember to the accusation that the news media is liberal and biased against conservatives.  It seemed to be drawn from a false belief that no person who believed in the Conservative cause and ideals – think Ronald Reagan and the Moral Majority – would ever express an opinion contrary to that company line.  It was as if, first, they did not believe that any reporter was capable of quarantining the influence of their personal beliefs when reporting the facts of a story, and second, that any facts reported that did not gild Reagan’s lily must be wrong or have been intentionally distorted to make him look bad.  And this was long before the rise of “alternative facts” or “fake news” and today’s growing mainstream distrust of mainstream reporting.  Where does that come from?

In a thoughtful piece in Slate this month, Ben Mathis-Lilley lays out the case that an economic impact on legacy media from online sources that do not prioritize fair and responsible reporting has made it “increasingly difficult to sustain a media outlet whose business mostly involves the costly process of nonpartisan fact-gathering and reporting.”

That’s especially true at the local level, where newspapers often simply don’t exist anymore—but it’s also true nationally, where the country is headed in the direction of having one reportorial omnipublication (the New York Times) and a few others that are mostly for people who work in business. Concurrently, the right wing has developed its own media apparatus, while social media and streaming platforms now allow public personalities to build their own audiences directly.

Where that mostly leaves the participants in media (defined broadly) is trying to hustle up a career by selling a strong perspective on the world—by having a dramatic and emotionally satisfying explanation for everything that’s happening everywhere. Its marker of success is being able to headline your own podcast or subscription-driven Substack newsletter, and it runs on opinion “takes,” which cost relatively little to produce, but have to compete for space and eyeballs on Google results, X and Bluesky, and Apple News. And in many cases, the more a take reinforces readers’ existing beliefs, the better it does. It’s a truism and a Paul Simon lyric for a reason: All else being equal, people prefer to hear what they want to hear, and disregard the rest.

So, if even the media outlets which are not ideologically bent one way or another are pushed to publish quick, emotional opinions about the news – rather than to report and present “the news” itself – in order to remain profitable and stay in business, it shouldn’t be surprising that more and more Americans have come to believe, through their own experience, that there is a lot of opinion included in mainstream “news.”

What this often (though not always!) rewards is pandering to simple, polemical worldviews—Everyone else is stupid, they’re all lying to you, this or that particular group is responsible for everything in the news that is upsetting—rather than uncertainty or curiosity. It’s a good time to be a person who says everything is bullshit. (Which, to be clear, is a take I usually agree with. There’s lots of bullshit out there!) At the same time, groups that feel like they’re under attack will look for their own messengers to deliver polemical responses which reject every criticism and assign blame somewhere else; this is what “stanning” is. (Crucially, the political center is just as subject to these incentives as everyone else; there are centrism stans, too, who find “illiberalism” at the scene of every crime.) It is a polarization-optimized discourse. And everything it touches gets a little dumber and more difficult to trust.

For a detailed explanation of how the rise of online “news” has threatened the existence of mainstream reporting, check out Phillip Longman’s “How Fighting Monopoly Can Save Journalism” in the first quarter’s Washington Monthly.  It has a thorough background of how digital players have stripped mainstream journalism of its income and contributed to the growth of opinion journalism; I found it very educational with both scary and hopeful aspects:

[With politicians of both parties] repealing or failing to enforce basic market rules that had long contained concentrated corporate power, policy makers enabled the emergence of a new kind of monopoly that engages in a broad range of deeply anticompetitive business practices. These include, most significantly, the cornering of advertising markets, which historically provided the primary means of financing journalism. This is the colossal policy failure that has effectively destroyed the economic foundations of a free press.

An extension of the attitude I first heard from Irene some 45 years ago is evident in our next president, who has a long record of attacking as corrupt and/or unfair any source of information that does not praise him.  That combative attitude is present in Republicans at lower levels of government, too, many of whom (I’m talking about you, Ken Paxton) have taken to refusing to even engage with the “hostile media”…and then pander to their supporters by later attacking those outlets over stories in which they didn’t get a chance to defend themselves!

I think most people want a reliable source for news that is not biased for or against certain politicians or any particular view of how the world should be.  Like the folks in a rural southeastern Colorado county who volunteered to pay more to keep their weekly newspaper from shutting down, from losing their only source of what was happening where they live.  If journalism can find a way to better provide that, affordably, we can still have the educated populace that is critical to our survival as a free people…as Ronald Reagan himself said it, in 1981: “If we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, as Jefferson cautioned, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed.”

You know you’re in trouble when one candidate for president encourages violence as a response to free speech and honest journalism, and some people cheer

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

Right after the U.S. Constitution established the three branches of government to provide checks and balances it immediately identified the next most important protections for American society: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”  In the First Amendment the Founding Fathers meant to make it clear that the people enjoyed freedom to live their lives on their own terms (within limits), and that the people (as a whole) were the superiors of the servants who staffed the government.  The people are free to say what’s on their mind and to share that information with others, and to call into question the words and ideas of their chosen and aspiring leaders.  And free to do so without retribution from the government.

Our most recent former president is hardly the first politician to have an adversarial relationship with American journalists; no president or any other government official enjoys being called out for flat-out lying or for bending the truth to his or her benefit.  But most don’t carry a crazy expectation that the free press is there to merely transcribe their words for posterity: he’s the only one I can remember who has, seemingly quite seriously, called for violence against anyone who criticizes him or fact-checks what he says.

Donald Trump told a crowd on Sunday that he wouldn’t mind if someone shot at the news media present at his rally here, escalating his violent rhetoric at one of his closing campaign events where he repeatedly veered off-message.

(snip)

Trump’s latest comments about the media underscored his embrace of violent language, days after he received blowback for suggesting former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney would not be such a “war hawk” if she went into combat and had guns “trained on her face.”

(snip)

Trump has also used violent language for hecklers at his rallies. In 2016, after someone interrupted a Las Vegas rally, Trump told the crowd: “Here’s a guy throwing punches, nasty as hell, screaming at everybody else,” then added, “I’d like to punch him in the face.”

In Iowa during the same campaign, he encouraged supporters to “knock the crap” out of potential hecklers. And last month, at a California rally, Trump suggested that a heckler would later get “the hell knocked out of her.”

Houston Chronicle columnist Chris Tomlinson puts a finer point on the problem:

More than 100 times since 2022, Trump has threatened to punish people who disagree with him, according to a tally by National Public Radio. He calls journalists the “enemy of the people,” anyone who disagrees with him “evil” and says critics are an “enemy within” more dangerous to the nation than Russian President Vladimir Putin or Chinese President Xi Jinping.

(snip)

“I think the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people,” Trump told Fox’s Sunday Morning Futures. “It should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by the National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.”

The MILITARY used to “handle” his internal enemies?  Just what the hell does that actually mean?  Well, according to his supporters and his campaign, it’s just campaign rhetoric.

Supporters assure me that we have nothing to fear from another Trump presidency. The Republican nominee is only engaging in campaign hyperbole; he will not execute any of these plans.

I’m unsure how you vote for a candidate whose comments the public should not take seriously. (emphasis added) If we shouldn’t believe Trump will put millions of immigrants in camps and jail his opponents, then why should we think he will impose tariffs and promote tax cuts?

What’s serious, and what’s balderdash?

No other candidate in American history has run for office expecting voters to psychically divine his or her authentic policies. Conservatives excoriate Kamala Harris and Tim Walz if they put one word out of place, but they excuse everything Trump says or does.

I don’t object when people who are dissatisfied with the way the country is being run turn to a candidate who I disagree with, even when I disagree on a long list of topics.  I try not to demonize my fellow citizens who make a different choice from me; that is their right, and it doesn’t make them evil.  I do hope that all Americans look at the full picture in considering which candidate to support, and I don’t mean looking for a candidate with whom you agree on every single thing…hard to believe that’s possible, for any of us.  That full picture means considering policy positions, and your perception of the candidate’s belief in the fundamental norms of American society and the American system of government.  And of their basic, inherent honesty.  And wondering, are they in it for America or are they running to advance themselves…or to be able to corruptly abuse the system to keep themselves out of prison?

Many of the Republicans who have endorsed Kamala Harris have made plain in doing so that they do not agree with her, politically, on much of anything.  Nevertheless, their concern for the full picture and their knowledge of this Republican candidate have led them to choose against their party this time.

“I tell you, I have never voted for a Democrat, but this year, I am proudly casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris,” [Liz] Cheney said at a Harris campaign event in Ripon, Wisconsin. In an attempt to persuade swing voters, she pointed toward former President Donald Trump’s actions on January 6, declaring that anyone “who would do these things can never be trusted with power again.”

“Donald Trump was willing to sacrifice our Capitol, to allow law enforcement officers to be beaten and brutalized in his name, and to violate the law and the Constitution in order to seize power for himself,” Cheney said as the event’s audience cheered. “I don’t care if you are a Democrat or Republican or an independent, that is depravity and we must never become numb to it.”

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There only is one choice

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

For most of us our daily habits are set at an early age.  From whether you get up early or late, to what you like to read and when in the day you like to read it, whether you give to charities or attend religious services, whether you watch a particular local television station or you bite your fingernails or use profanity or can’t save your money, once you get into the habit of doing something it’s usually hard to stop.

When I was a teenager I got interested in government and politics.  Don’t know why.  I studied journalism in college and worked on the school paper and then in radio and (public) television news, so on top of it already being a habit it became a professional responsibility for me to stay informed.  Even after I left daily journalism for government/industrial video production and public affairs I still kept tuned to the news of government and politics.  Can’t shake it, even when I wish I could.  Like now.

Americans have many different political philosophies about the proper role of government in our society…we in fact have the Constitutional freedom to disagree with one another, and with the people in power, about how things should be and should be done.  (Not everyone in the world has that freedom, and those of us who had the good fortune to be born Americans shouldn’t take that for granted.)  Even when the differences are extreme, from the silly to the dangerous and possibly the un-American, everyone has the right to their beliefs.  But that doesn’t make it less disheartening to see a not-insignificant percentage of my fellow citizens supporting the candidate in yet another race for president who stands for greed and self-aggrandizement, who lies as easily as he breathes, who is prone to being manipulated by enemies and opponents and openly fawns over despots, and who does not and never has had the best interests of our country – our whole country – as the goal of his efforts.  You want to turn your head and ignore the ugly reality, but you can’t.

Don’t take my word for who the former guy is and what might happen if he were to win a second term.  Retired U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal cites the need for character in a man or woman who seeks to lead our country, and he says there is one major party candidate who doesn’t have what it takes.

As a citizen, veteran and voter, I was not comfortable with many of the policy recommendations that Democrats offered at their convention in Chicago or those Republicans articulated in Milwaukee. My views tend more toward the center of the political spectrum. And although I have opinions on high-profile issues, like abortion, gun safety and immigration, that’s not why I made my decision.

Political narratives and policies matter, but they didn’t govern my choice. I find it easy to be attracted to, or repelled by, proposals on taxes, education and countless other issues. But I believe that events and geopolitical and economic forces will, like strong tides, move policymakers where they ultimately must go. In practice, few administrations travel the course they campaigned on. Circumstances change. Our president, therefore, must be more than a policymaker or a malleable reflection of the public’s passions. She or he must lead — and that takes character.

Character is the ultimate measure of leadership for those who seek the highest office in our land. The American revolutionary Thomas Paine is said to have written, “Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us.” Regardless of what a person says, character is ultimately laid bare in his or her actions. So I pay attention to what a leader does.

(snip)

Each of us must seriously contemplate our choice and apply the values we hope to find in our president, our nation and ourselves. Uncritically accepting the thinking of others or being swayed by the roar of social media crowds is a mistake. To turn a blind eye toward or make excuses for weak character from someone we propose to confer awesome power and responsibility on is to abrogate our role as citizens. We will get — and deserve — what we elect.

I’ve thought deeply about my choice and considered what I’ve seen and heard and what I owe my three granddaughters. I’ve concluded that it isn’t political slogans or cultural tribalism; it is the best president my vote might help select. So I have cast my vote for character, and that vote is for Vice President Kamala Harris.

Ms. Harris has the strength, the temperament and, importantly, the values to serve as commander in chief. When she sits down with world leaders like President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, representing the United States on the global stage, I have no doubt that she is working in our national interest, not her own.

Or, how about the 111 “former national security and foreign policy officials who served in the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and/or Donald Trump, or as Republican Members of Congress” who earlier this week announced their endorsement of Kamala Harris.  Yep, more Republicans endorsing the Democrat.  Not just saying, like Mike Pence did, that they will not vote for Trump but refusing to say they will vote for Harris.  They have reasons they state plainly why they believe Trump is not fit for office.

We believe that the President of the United States must be a principled, serious, and steady leader who can advance and defend American security and values, strengthen our alliances, and protect our democracy. We expect to disagree with Kamala Harris on many domestic and foreign policy issues, but we believe that she possesses the essential qualities to serve as President and Donald Trump does not. We therefore support her election to be President.

We firmly oppose the election of Donald Trump. As President, he promoted daily chaos in government, praised our enemies and undermined our allies, politicized the military and disparaged our veterans, prioritized his personal interest above American interests, and betrayed our values, democracy, and this country’s founding documents. In our view, by inciting the violent attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 and defending those who committed it, he has violated his oath of office and brought danger to our country. As former Vice President Pence has said “anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be President of the United States.”

Donald Trump’s susceptibility to flattery and manipulation by Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, unusual affinity for other authoritarian leaders, contempt for the norms of decent, ethical and lawful behavior, and chaotic national security decision-making are dangerous qualities – as many honorable Republican colleagues and military officers who served in senior national security positions in his administration have frequently testified. He is unfit to serve again as President, or indeed in any office of public trust.

A copy of their full letter is here; read all the names.

But there’s more.  Not only do these people clearly see the dangers we face if Trump wins another term, but they cite reasons to vote for Harris.

* Consistently championed the rule of law, democracy, and our constitutional principles;

* Pledged to “ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world” and to honor and respect those who wear the uniform;

* Committed to sign the bipartisan Border Security package, drafted under the leadership of Republican Senator James Lankford and other Republicans, which would hire 1,500 new Customs and Border Protection personnel and provide more resources for law enforcement but was opposed by Donald Trump to avoid giving President Biden any political advantage;

* Supported a strong NATO to stand up to Russia and protect European and American security and been firm in her support of Ukraine;

* Declared her intention to ensure that the United States will meet the economic and military competition with China;

* Declared her intention to “always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself” and “to take whatever action is necessary to defend our forces and our interests against Iran and Iran-backed terrorists”;

* Demonstrated that she can engage in orderly national security decision-making, without the constant drama and Cabinet turnover of the Trump Administration; and

* Committed to appoint a Republican to her Cabinet in order to encourage a diversity of views and restore a measure of bipartisanship and comity to our domestic politics.

Not that they support her position on all issues; they don’t.  But they are realistic:

…any potential concerns [about positions advocated by left wing Democrats] pale in comparison to Donald Trump’s demonstrated chaotic and unethical behavior and disregard for our Republic’s time-tested principles of constitutional governance. His unpredictable nature is not the negotiating virtue he extols. To the contrary, in matters of national security, his demeanor invites equally erratic behavior from our adversaries, which irresponsibly threatens reckless and dangerous global consequences.

In short, Donald Trump cannot be trusted “to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic . . . and bear true faith and allegiance to the same.” We believe that Kamala Harris can, and we urge other Americans to join us in supporting her.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter, former Congresswoman Liz Cheney, are among a growing number of prominent Republicans who are endorsing Harris: people who’ve devoted their careers to the Republican Party, but who are speaking out against their party’s candidate in this election.  (They can always choose the Republican next time, right?)  Their position, if I may paraphrase, is that they do not agree with all or most of what the Democrats stand for or want to do, or how they want to do it, but believe it would be far worse to turn Trump loose in the White House again…and in our electoral system, no other candidate has a chance of winning.  The same feeling is true of many of those on this list, compiled by the New York Times editorial board, of former close associates of, and some relatives of, Trump, some of whom were caught saying what they really think of him.  It ain’t pretty.

Do you really want to vote for a candidate who you know is lying to you?  Who has proved to us over time that he’ll say anything – whatever he wants to be true in any given moment, or whatever he thinks will help him – because he doesn’t think we’re smart enough to see through it?  Who right now is campaigning to get back in power by making up a scary scary world that he promises he can fix with the snap of his tiny tiny fingers?

In Donald Trump’s imaginary world, Americans can’t venture out to buy a loaf of bread without getting shot, mugged or raped. Immigrants in a small Ohio town eat their neighbors’ cats and dogs. World War III and economic collapse are just around the corner. And kids head off to school only to return at day’s end having undergone gender confirming surgery.

The former president’s imaginary world is a dark, dystopian place, described by Trump in his rallies, interviews, social media posts and debate appearances to paint an alarming picture of America under the Biden-Harris administration.

It is a distorted, warped and, at times, absurdist portrait of a nation where the insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to deadly effect were merely peaceful protesters, and where unlucky boaters are faced with the unappealing choice between electrocution or a shark attack. His extreme caricatures also serve as another way for Trump to traffic in lies and misinformation, using an alternate reality of his own making to create an often terrifying — and, he seems to hope — politically devastating landscape for his political opponents.

No matter how many times the “reality-based” media research and confirm that there is no truth to these outrageous claims – post-birth abortion?  Immigrants come from the same “asylum” as Hannibal Lecter?  “I alone can stop” whatever imaginary horror he’s conjured? – he runs them out there over and over again.  Do you really want as president a man who lied to your face more than 30,000 times during his first term in office (Washington Post)?  I mean, he even lied about Oprah, for crying out loud!

I had been considering saying, c’mon, you gotta vote for Harris because she is not Trump…because, being not Trump seems like a great qualification in this election.  We all lived through his term in office; don’t you remember what it was like?  Do you want that again?  Or maybe worse, now that he’s gotten a keep-me-out-of-jail-free card from the Supreme Court.  (Funny, right, that not one of the other 45 American presidents ever claimed the critical need for immunity from prosecution, not even the ones that proved they could have used it.  What does this clown have mind for a second term that leads him to believe that having immunity from prosecution would be handy to have?)

Even if you have to hold your nose while doing it, I say vote for Harris: it’s the only thing that you and I as individuals can do to stop Trump, and I believe that is crucial.  No candidate is perfect (assuming you can’t vote for yourself!), and we each of us always have to make a choice as to which of the candidates available will do the best job for our country as a whole, and who offers a personality and political worldview closest to our own.  A candidate who we trust will try to do the right thing.  No, we don’t know everything about Kamala Harris as a potential president, any more than we knew everything about every other president before he was first elected, but she is not a total stranger.  And, we know what she is not.

After Such Violence, the Center Must Hold

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

New York Times opinion writer David French had these thoughts soon after the apparent assassination attempt against Donald Trump on Saturday evening. I hope we can all share his sentiments as we go forward.

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.” William Butler Yeats wrote these words in his poem “The Second Coming” in a different time of violence and fear. The year was 1919, Europe was still reeling from World War I, a deadly influenza pandemic was sweeping through the world, and the Irish war of independence was underway. Yeats was writing from the heart of a storm, a storm that would grow indescribably worse in 20 short years.

I think of Yeats’s words often. By “center,” he’s referring not to some kind of moderate political middle but rather to the moral center of civilization. When the moral center gives way, nations fall.

I thought of those words again when I saw the blood on Donald Trump’s ear on Saturday. Now is the time for America’s moral center to rise up and declare — with one voice, neither red nor blue — “Enough.” We either recover our sense of decency and basic respect for the humanity of our opponents, or we will see, in Yeats’s words, the “blood-dimmed tide” loosed in our land.

The cultural conditions for chaos are created by a lack of courage and character. Yeats lamented that the “best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” And already, we’ve seen the passionate intensity of the worst on display. Members of one extreme faction have claimed the shooting was an elaborate ploy to generate sympathy for Trump. At the same time, members of the opposing extreme faction have attempted to claim that President Biden is responsible for the attack.

How does the center hold? Democrats and independents must stand in solidarity with Republicans, grieving for the dead, praying for the wounded and giving thanks that Trump survived with only a minor wound. Virtually every leading Democrat has condemned the violence with a loud voice, and Biden has both condemned the violence and spoken to Trump directly.

All of this is good and necessary, but it is not sufficient. Each of us has our own role to play, in our own circles of influence, either big or small. There has rarely been a better time to love our enemies, to pray for our nation and to remember — during one of the most fraught political campaigns in generations — that each and every one of us is a human being, created in the image of God.