The Prosecutor and the Felon

 It has been a rough couple of weeks, living with a sinking feeling in my stomach that the country was about to fall off a cliff. For reasons I can't explain, I have been really moved by the argument that the world's democracies should be standing behind Ukraine in its struggle to push back against its Russian invaders. I'm also sick over the fact that the rightists are not satisfied with putting women's lives at risk because they can't get a doctor to help them with ectopic pregnancies, but are actually trying to make birth control more difficult and have advanced as a vice presidential candidate a man who suggests that when a women has a husband who beats her that she should just tough it out. Or that hundreds of thousands of people who entered the country illegally but built happy healthy families with American wives and children could now be rounded up, thrown in concentration camps and deported. Cruelty hangs thick in the American air.

That agonizing dread is a response to the consensus I've sensed that Trump was pretty certain to win the election in November.

And then today, at long last, the frustration has lifted over whether Biden would withdraw from the race.  He isn't in the Oval Office but holed up in the summer White House in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, an old man sick with Covid. That probably explains why he made the announcement by letter rather than by TV address to the nation.

I came out as a democratic socialist back in 2015 and 2016 when the democrats were struggling over who should follow Obama. I was a strong supporter of Bernie Sanders (still am), and agreed to go with Hillary if she became the candidate running against Trump, and was not at all keen on Biden, seeing him as too representative of mainstream capitalist America, too much the "establishment," too elitist, too much of the reason why so many Americans were looking for a leader to fix all they saw wrong with America.

I have not changed my mind that there is much wrong with the lack of equity in America, and I think I understand where the impulse comes from to tear it all down and start over, but recently I've become a Biden supporter because the Trump solution to the problem has struck me as the most wrong-headed notion I've ever encountered in my lifetime. I became not just anti-Trump; I came to respect Biden as a whole lot of relief following what I saw as a disastrous Trump administration. I think he is a decent man, and I think he has been more than effective as a first executive. I like the guy.

I stayed on the fence over whether he should withdraw as long as I did because I didn't feel I had enough information on who might best defeat Trump.  I still don't, but somehow the news of Biden's withdrawal gives me hope. It's possible for democrats to rally behind Kamala Harris - or another candidate - and get more directly and intensely focused on fighting back against the almost inhuman policies the professional liars that make up the Trumpist Republican Party have in store for us.  Suddenly I feel the depression lifting a bit. Not entirely - I'm far too cynical to celebrate victory prematurely - but moving in that direction.  And if you want to really enjoy the change in direction, have a listen to The Bulwark with Tim Miller here for an indication of what's likely to come.  Start at minute 15:49, if you haven't got time for the whole thing.

What fun to suddenly be able to entertain positive questions like could Kamala select Gretchen Whitmer and bring on for the first time in history a two-female ticket?  Why not? How many two-male administrations have we had?  No logical reason why a two-female ticket couldn't pull it off.  Or how about Pete Buttigieg as VP and a black woman married to a Jewish man partnered with a gay man?

Can't believe the country would go that far into liberal territory, so I'm not serious about suggesting it. But I do like the idea of a Harris-Shapiro ticket, and he, along with Whitmer, seem to be the leading prospects because they both are popular administrators of large swing states. That's something I could get excited about.

And I have to admit the chauvinist in me is perking up at the thought that a local girl could be running for president. Kamala calls Berkeley/Oakland home, as do I, and that makes me smile from ear to ear.

The fat lady hasn't sung yet, by any means, so it's way too soon to know where things are going.

But damn, doesn't it feel good to feel some hope again?

Project 2025 - a real threat on the horizon

Liberals and conservatives both agree there's no shortage of social decay in Western Civilization that could use some "cleaning up." Drug usage, crime and corruption are clear impediments to the good life.

In recent years, much of Europe and America has been moving toward the right, and that move has emboldened the Christian Nationalists among us to come out of the shadows and to take the gloves off, if you'll permit what feels like a mixed metaphor. I want to riff a bit about what they've been up to.

My original problem with organized religion stems from the role they have traditionally played in fostering homophobia and male supremacy, but more recently, as many (most?) good Christian folk have joined with most of the modern world in supporting the enlightenment values of universal liberty, equality of the sexes, and fraternity/sorority of all nations, I have dropped my once strong hostility toward the Christian faith.  Instead of wishing Christians would simply go away, I now feel sympathy for those among them who define their religion along spiritual guidelines following the Sermon on the Mount and stress love, compassion and forgiveness as primary virtues. I say "sympathy" because they have clearly been taken over in large part by a critical mass among them who stress political, rather than spiritual, goals and identify themselves in more tribal terms than universal signifiers. Rot (or "entropy" to wuss out on the description of what's happening) happens not only in Western Civilization; it goes right into the religious organization of the Church itself.

Two such groups are Victor Orban's European brand of Christian Nationalism and the current brand of Christian Nationalism in the United States represented by Kevin Roberts and the organization he has headed since 2021, the Heritage Foundation.

Orban taps into European racism by stoking fears of Europe being overrun by black African illegal immigrants. Moreover, Hungarians/Europeans fear, some of them, that by supporting the rights of LGBT citizens they are aiding and abetting the disintegration of the nuclear family. Moves within the Catholic Church to allow the consecration of female clergy are seen not just as a threat to patriarchal control, but to the very institution itself. Where did I leave that panic button?

We all can agree on the problem, social decay. We can't agree on the solution. Conservatives want less change and they want it slower; progressives want more change and they want it now.

The American presidential election is not just about the battle between a self-serving narcissist and a decent old man with conspicuously failing mental faculties. It is that, but it is also a battle between liberals and conservatives about the speed of change.  Our political life has gotten a lot nastier in recent years, public discourse has gotten meaner, language fouler, and we can easily forget that somewhere buried under the rubble is a legitimate need for nuanced thinking. Change is necessary. It's not whether we need change, it's how much and how fast.

It's almost impossible for me and most of the people in my friendship circle not to characterize the trumpists among us seeking power in November as actual monsters.  They don't even show us the courtesy of hiding their attempts to put their personal interests way ahead of national interests and the welfare of the population at large. But, at the same time, I worry we are focusing too much on the really bad guys, the fascist (or proto-fascist, if you will) element that stresses power and control over democratic restraint. I think it might do us better in the long run to focus more closely on the non-fascists, like the Christian Nationalists who have an apparently sincere desire to do the right thing. Not because they are superior to the fascists (obviously I think they are) but because they are working from a sincere, if naive, desire to make the world a better place. I think, because their desire is sincere, it is possibly even more dangerous.  They tell us the worst place you can be is between a mother bear and her cub. I think getting between a zealot and their god is no less risky.

You don't find common ground with fascists. You fight them till they're dead and gone. But you can find common ground with those who reason suggests are misguided.  You both get to test the Hegelian notion that one's best reasoning on one day can merge with the reasoning of one's opponent over time and you can both enjoy the fruits of this approach toward understanding.

The first step, though, is figuring out where your "opponent" is just plain wrong and where they are simply misguided.

What do you know about Project 2025?

Anti-Trump apologist Brian Tyler Cohen sums up the Christian Nationalist Project 2025 this way.  Among other things, he says it would:

1. take away reproductive freedom nationwide
   
2. reverse approval of the abortion pill mifepristone
3. give handouts to the ultra wealthy
4. dismantle the Department of Education
5. cancel Biden's student loan forgiveness program
6. cancel progress made on climate change
7. extend Trump's Muslim ban
8. arm teachers
9. build camps to detain and deport fifteen million illegal immigrants, including many with family ties to America who have no reason to call any other place home
10. replace pro-LGBT policies with policies that support straight families only
11. reinstate the ban on trans Americans serving in the military
12. cancel free meals for kids in schools
13. consolidate power in the Oval Office, eliminating checks and balances

It is an advanced recruitment policy to replace 20,000 professional government employees with men and women selected for their willingness to do Trump's bidding, rather than on the basis of an objective evaluation of their technical expertise.

The government employees in question are commonly referred to as "career civil servants." Kevin Roberts, who heads the Heritage Foundation, refers to them as "unelected bureaucrats."  And if this all comes to pass, we might come to see them in future as Trump-appointed agents.The distinction requires serious parsing and illustrates the maxim that "the devil is in the details."

The word seems to be getting around, finally, that this Project 2025 is on the horizon in the event of a Trump victory in November. People are waking up to what they (and I) see as a real threat to democracy. Even Trump himself has apparently cottoned to the fact that people are onto him. Today he actually denied knowing anything about it. (And if you buy that, I've got a bridge to sell you.)

In any case, keep your eye on Project 2025. Don't get lost in the debate over whether Biden should withdraw. That decision will be made in due course, but the Project 2025 plan remains a serious threat on the horizon.