Are We Losing Our Free Speech Rights?

Our Constitutional rights are being threatened, if not revoked, by the Trump administration. His goals, articulated before the 2024 election in a document called Project 2025, are filtering down to state and local Republican leaders including in West Virginia.

Watch what they do, not what they say is a common warning made about autocratic leaders and those seeking to become autocrats. They make grandiose claims and threats, but don’t always act on them, knowing that some of them are illegal and some are fantasy. For instance, on the first day of his 2nd term, Trump ignored the Constitutional guarantee of citizenship to anyone born in the United States, signing an executive order declaring exceptions. Thankfully, the courts have stepped in to halt implementation until it can be fully argued in court.

Trump has threatened and in many cases revoked Congressional funding ending grants and contracts from universities, health systems, and law firms, and questioned mergers by media companies and their licenses over criticism of him or his complaints that they unfairly support partisan causes or cultural issues he opposes. He and his administration have sought the arrest and deportation of individuals opposing Israel’s war in Gaza, which the UN has now deemed a genocide. These actions impinge on free speech and other rights guaranteed in our Constitution. 

Both Trump’s administration and Governor Morrisey’s have taken action to loosen or restrict vaccine regulations for religious or health reasons claimed by conspiracy theorists, which puts healthy people at risk of infections by diseases long considered controlled or virtually eliminated. This impinges on the right of the people to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness promised in the Declaration of Independence.

I thought it highly unlikely I would ever feel the direct effect of these actions. On Thursday, September 18, Governor Morrisey held a memorial open to the public at the WV Capitol for right wing activist Charlie Kirk who was murdered while speaking publicly at a college campus in Utah. While I know little about Kirk and am shocked that he became a victim of gun violence, most likely for a political reason, one thing I have learned about him is that he was a fierce advocate of free speech and held public dialogues with people he disagreed with. In fact, during Thursday’s event, Governor Morrisey reportedly urged West Virginians to follow Kirk’s example by “celebrating free speech…even among people we disagree with.” But apparently he did not let the Capitol Police know that that was his wish. Watch what they do, not what they say.

I tried to attend that event where I intended to hold a sign saying, “Free Speech, Strict Gun Laws.” As I walked toward the gathering, at the corner of Greenbrier and Kanawha Boulevard, two Capitol Police officers stopped me and told me I could go no farther or would be arrested for disrupting a solemn event. I said I was going to stand across the street from the gathering and silently hold my sign, and yet they repeated the threat. 

I’m ashamed to say, I capitulated and stood on the opposite corner and held my sign to show passersby. 

West Virginia is one of only a few states where Trump maintains a positive approval rating as his popularity drops due to his failure to improve the economy and cost of living and his flagrant attacks against beloved institutions like public broadcasting, public education, universities, comedians, and the Constitution. 

I hope West Virginians will watch what Trump and Morrisey and their party’s representatives do in the coming months and years and elect people who will protect our precious rights and freedoms with their actions, not just their words.

Now is the Time for Action!

 Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. People who grew up, as I did, in an age of typewriters (google a video if you need to), will remember that phrase as the most common practice sentence for ‘touch typing.’ Of course, an updated version would replace ‘men’ with ‘people’.

There are many ways we can step up to make a difference between now and the next election, and I encourage you not to limit yourself to the easiest ones. I will mention a few that come to mind, most of which I have done in the past, recently, or will do my best to dedicate some time to. As I come out of a near depression following Trump’s election in November exacerbated by the sheer incompetence and overreach of his governing. which are resulting in quickly sinking public approval, I have remembered how good it can make me feel to take action. Here are some of the ways you can make a difference.

Talk to friends, neighbors, co-workers, fellow members of churches, clubs, or the guy sitting next to you at the bar. Ask them how they’re feeling about the first months of Trump’s second term. If they think everything is great, don’t argue. If they have doubts, draw them out, be sympathetic. You don’t have to try to persuade them—it can take several interactions before they are ready to acknowledge what you see as obvious truth and facts.

Contact our Republican representatives in Congress. It’s easy to think they won’t follow our pleas for them to oppose harmful legislation or hold the administration accountable, but if enough of us do this often enough, they will begin to understand that they may face difficulties in the next election if they ignore their constituents. There’s a great app available, “5 Calls,”  that makes it easy, and I try to call every day. It just takes a few minutes and the app provides suggested points to make on various issues. Make sure to identify yourself as a constituent. If you’re Republican and/or voted for Trump, mention that!

Do you have more money than time? There are many ways to donate to make a difference, and if you’re like me and have made some donations you are probably on every candidate and non-profit’s mailing list now. It can be a real turn off. For orgs that my wife and I know are doing great work, we budget an annual donation and then refuse all requests for additional. Currently, I think that the courts are the most effective arena for stopping the worst actions of the Trump administration, so I am donating to a few organizations that are bringing lawsuits to stop the harm like ACLU, Democracy Forward, and State Democracy Defenders Action.

There are many advocacy organizations in West Virginia working on issues that may be  important to you. Volunteering for them (and/or donating) can end up impacting elections in our state because these organizations notify supporters about which candidates are best on their issues, sometimes buying ads and knocking on doors. 

Many of the Republican supermajority in the legislature have  modeled themselves after Donald Trump. They are ignoring norms and attacking or revoking support for programs and government agencies that provide essential services while rewarding their rich donors including corporations with tax cuts and other favors. Consider donating or volunteering for WV Citizens Action (for 50 years fighting for rights, public policy, democracy and the environment in WV), WV Rivers Coalition (protecting our land and waters), West Virginians for Affordable Health Care, Together for Public Schools WV (project of WV Center for Budget and Policy), Moms Demand Action WV (gun safety), WV Free (reproductive health and more), Fairness WV (LGBTQ+ protection), WV Black Voter Impact Initiative to name a few.

Don’t wait until a month before the 2026 election to consider volunteering to make calls, send texts, knock on doors, or help out a candidate or county party effort. It takes time to establish trust with voters suspicious of government who think “they’re all corrupt.” In WV we are small enough to get to know the candidates personally, and if you do, you can tell people what you know about the ones you support. Of course, if you’re passionate enough, consider running!

Finally, while protesting may not be your thing, when large numbers of people make their dissatisfaction known in public, it can become a big news story that brings others out who may otherwise be fearful of making their opinions known. A feeling of being part of a peaceful movement is a powerful force for change.

We are not likely to change our deep red state significantly in one election cycle. But if we make some gains, we can start a change that builds over time. Now is the time for all of us to come to the aid of our country! 

Paul Epstein is a retired teacher and musician living in Charleston

Dark Humor is the Best Medicine

Laughter is the best medicine goes the old saw. That’s right, one that’s too dull to cut, but when you try to cut a board with it, it’s likely to slip off and cut you. I’m not sure if the howl I let out when I heard the news that President-elect Trump plans to nominate Matt Gaetz (R-FL) as U.S. Attorney General of the U.S., the top law enforcement officer of the nation, was a howl of laughter or howl of pain. My wife rushed into the kitchen where I was cooking dinner to see if I was okay. I’m not. It was laughter, but this laughter is painful and I don’t know if it’s going to make me better. 

For the next four years, if I laugh at the antics of the clown car that Trump is installing, it will be a mixture of outrage and pain. Behind the shock, the insanity, the fundamental cruelty that underlies the story of the day, the actual results will be anything but funny for the people being maligned, prosecuted, rounded up to be detained or forced out of the country, going hungry, dying or being maimed for lack of necessary healthcare, losing their savings, losing their jobs, or any of the other possible harms we will face under an incompetent, malevolent federal leadership. 

Take everything that follows as an attempt at the blackest humor (according to dictionary.com: a form of humor that regards human suffering as absurd rather than pitiable, or that considers human existence as ironic and pointless but somehow comic).

Congressman Gaetz is such an amazing pick for that job because, of course, he’s been accused of sex-trafficking of a 17 year old girl and illicit drug use, and was subject to a Congressional Ethics Investigation for that and for accepting possibly illegal gifts. The report was set to be released Friday, and may have resulted in his expulsion from Congress, so Trump’s lifeline announcement allowed him to safely resign from his seat before the possible consequences could be enforced. Hilarious! Trump really stuck it to the libs! 

If only Jeffrey Epstein were still alive. He could have been pardoned and installed as special advisor to the President on women and children. Can you imagine the howls from the lame stream media on that? That would have been so awesome!

Speaking of awesome. How about Robert F. Kennedy for health czar? Finally someone who understands that the only thing better than being safe from deadly diseases is to experience those diseases for yourself and conquer them with your natural human vigor and strength instead of so-called lifesaving vaccines and medications. Think Darwin’s survival of the fittest. The problem with our modern world is that we allow too many weak individuals to survive. Disease should be given a fair shot at thinning the herd. In the words of one great thinker of the 20th century, “The state has the responsibility of declaring as unfit for reproductive purposes anyone who is obviously ill or genetically unsound ... and must carry through with this responsibility ruthlessly without respect to understanding or lack of understanding on the part of anyone”—Adolph Hitler, in “Mein Kampf,” 1925. See, he had a plan, kind of like the brilliant, forward thinking document “Project 2025.” 

What are the qualities of a great leader? If you’re thinking integrity, competence, character, honesty, collaboration and such, you are SO OLD SCHOOL (speaking of which, who needs school when you have AI and who needs money when you have Crypto!). 

A truly great leader must come across knowledgeable and suave on television. Central casting. Only the best looking (and the richest) qualify in the Trump administration because they are the ones most able to deliver the TRUTH to the American people. Oh, did I point out the meaning of truth? Yeah, words aren’t what they seem. As George Orwell points out in 1984, “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength….It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.” Such beautiful words to live by!

I could go on. And I will, some other day. Or maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll build a bunker stocked for at least four years. Maybe I’d better make it 20, surely he won’t live longer than that.

Paul Epstein is a retired teacher and musician living in Charleston 

published in the 11/16/24 weekend edition of the Charleston Gazette-Mail

Democracy isn't Professional Wrestling

Poor Donald Trump. He had President Biden on the ropes and saw certain victory ahead until Kamala Harris jumped in the ring, and along with her buddy, Coach Walz of Minnesota, they’re in the process of taking him down as the crowd cheers with delight!

Sounds a lot like one of Donald Trump’s favorite fake sports, professional wrestling, in which the outcome is pre-determined and tag team partners can turn the tide in a theatrical last minute save.

But this is not a fake sport, it’s life and death for democracy in America. While Trump and Vance fit the image of the trash talking personification of evil portrayed by some professional wrestlers and Harris and Walz seem to represent the joyful warriors on the side of everything good, the results are not pre-determined and it remains to be seen who will prevail in the public arena after the votes are cast and accurately counted.

And though the referees, aka the Supreme Court, have demonstrated favoritism for the former president by clearing the way for him to avoid further criminal trials before the election for his alleged, but well documented criminal behavior in and since office, they will likely have no role to play in the final outcome if enough Americans cast their votes for the forces of light over darkness.

Novelists, comic book artists, movie makers, playwrights could not manufacture such stereotypical characters or situations as we have in this election ripe for the melodrama of the ages, and no doubt this period in American history will be the subject of fact and fiction for centuries, at least if Trump doesn’t become the dictator his allies who designed “Project 2025” sketch out should he win. 

In that America, as in autocracies around the world, over time the media will cease to be free to report the truth, schools will be banned from accurately teaching history, health care, child care, and labor rights will be trashed, books will be banned, internment camps will be created to round up immigrants for deportation, the Justice Department will become a weapon to be wielded by a vindictive dictator, our foreign policy will become a cash machine for the president and his cronies.


While professional wrestling is an entertaining fantasy, there is nothing entertaining about this contest. The stakes are real and the outcome is life and death, not for the contestants, but for many of us, the audience. We the people have the power to determine the outcome through our dedication to preserving Freedom and the American Way as did Superman during World War II (oh, wait, that was a fantasy). 

Seriously, here in West Virginia, it may be impossible to affect the national election results, but by donating and volunteering we may have an effect on the outcome in the swing states that will determine the final results. And who knows, the current enthusiasm may filter down to our state and local races. If enough of us organize and exercise the singular most powerful force in America, the power of the people to vote, we may be able to turn out deadbeats like Jim Justice and others who work to benefit corporations and the rich over the rest of us. When we vote, we win!

published in the Charleston Gazette-Mail Aug 14, 2024

Paul Epstein is a retired teacher and musician living in Charleston

Rural White Appalachians Feel Victimized, We Should Listen

    I recently wrote an op-ed (Charleston Gazette-Mail, 2/15/23 "Is it Woke Just to be a Decent Person?") explaining and debunking the negative attacks by extremist Republicans on what they call “woke” (the English teacher in me wants to correct that to wokeness). They apply this taunt to anyone who holds ideas different from theirs, especially those held by Democrats, liberals, progressives. Beliefs such as that democracy is important; that our Constitution protects us from being subject to the religious rules and practices that may not agree with our own; that American history is not simply a story of rugged individualists conquering a wilderness and building a modern nation, but that our history contains many shameful chapters in which the majority white settlers oppressed, murdered, and stole from the indigenous people, they enslaved people they imported from Africa and the Caribbean and any immigrants whose skin was not as light as most northern Europeans. Republicans want laws that protect them from having to treat people equally whose sexual identity does not match the two genders recognized in the Christian Bible, ban books, teachers, and ideas that might cause their children to question the narrative of American greatness in all things at all times or cause them discomfort as they grapple with difficult issues encountered in factual history.

Remember Hillary Clinton’s comment that there were different “baskets” of Republicans, most of whom were reasonable and could be worked with, but a minority of whom belonged in the “basket of deplorables?” Remember Obama’s observation to a group of educated urbanites that when some working class folks lose the industries that had supported their communities for generations, sometimes “they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations?”

Clinton and Obama weren’t wrong.  Who could argue that some of those who stormed the U.S. Capitol or those who marched with Tiki torches in Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us,” weren’t acting deplorably? While I believe one shouldn’t label a person deplorable, suggesting they can’t change, aren’t many rural white Americans angry, going to churches or seeking news sources that tell them criminals and rapists are flooding over the borders to change our way of life? Aren’t some even considering using their guns to start a revolution?

But I want to argue that we are not going to change minds by writing people off as crazy, stupid, uneducated, or un-American. Despite our facts, statistics, and logic, many every day West Virginians feel as if they are victimized by life in America—and they are not wrong.

West Virginians endure jokes and even discrimination because they use the language they grew up with, a dialect that includes words like ain’t, usages like “he don’t,” accents that make it hard to distinguish pin from pen or make flower sound like “flar.” Their pride in independence: the ability to eke out sustenance from a rocky and mountainous region causes them to be subjected to stereotypes that they walk around with rifles, barefoot, carrying a jug of moonshine. Of course some do—and celebrate that, and will invite you to join them hunting or drinking. Many people believe Trump wasn’t entirely wrong when he said, “there were very fine people on both sides” in Charlottesville. We’ve had presidents, writers of the Constitution who it’s hard not to call “very fine people,” but they owned other people, profited off their labor, while being civil and polite to others. Among the January 6 rioters were people who truly believed they were protesting a stolen election. We should never define people in black and white, though their actions can be defined. As to their character, there are always shades of grey. 

My message today is simply this, we can’t write off our neighbors as beyond redemption. They may believe things that we know are untrue, they may fit Appalachian stereotypes: suspicious of outsiders, believers in strict religions that promise hellfire in the hereafter for anyone who touches demon alcohol or strays from moral strictures regarding gender and sexuality.  They may speak and write in what appear to be illiterate ways, and they may express hatred for people who do not look like them, who they actually may fear. Nevertheless, they can be decent people who would “give you the shirt off your back,” tow your car out of a ditch, give you a basket of fresh vegetables. 

Perhaps we can change their minds, but not unless we start from a place of respect. They may be extremists and may be fast asleep to the changes we see in the culture of the United States and the world, but we can begin to wake them up only if we rise above our prejudices.

Paul Epstein is a retired teacher and musician living in Charleston, WV

Wake Up, West Virginia

 

Wake up, West Virginia. If Florida is “where woke goes to die,” as their governor Ron DeSantis crows, then we need to understand what it means for West Virginia. For far right political propaganda warriors, “woke” is an all encompassing term for everything they believe is wrong with being liberal or progressive in one’s thinking.

The term “woke” started among young people on college campuses to describe the awareness they felt for the problems of our society that they were concerned with and studying. Those who denied that racism was a continuing problem in our institutions, that LGBTQ+ people needed protections against discrimination, that misogyny and sexual assault were not solved by laws, that climate change was an existential problem, and that there was a relationship, or intersectionality, that connected these problems, well, that person was not awake to the problems many vulnerable minorities face. In short, being aware, practicing empathy, is being “woke.”

Many social conservatives, on the other hand, proudly deny these problems and see possible solutions as problems. They claim it’s a problem to acknowledge that racism still exists in America and even sometimes go so far as to say it is the white majority that is suffering from discrimination. They claim that allowing same sex marriage somehow degrades the institution of marriage between heterosexuals and that someone who views themself as “trans,” or a different gender than they appear to be (or were “assigned at birth” which medically speaking is not always clear), is not entitled to the same rights as people they view as normal. They resent being asked to be respectful by asking or using a person’s preferred pronouns. They view the right to burn fossil fuels as a God given right despite trillions of dollars in disasters caused or made worse by climate change. They deny people the right of bodily autonomy in matters of pregnancy. And they demand that children should be shielded from learning anything about these issues in school, even if they come from families where it is their lived experience.

What does it mean to not be “woke?” Above, I identified social conservatives who deny these issues. Some are like ostriches with their heads in the ground, seeking to ignore a changing world. Some are angry that the world they were taught about in church or home is not the one they now confront. They want to turn back the clock. To not be woke, I believe, is to be either ignorant or in denial. As a white, heterosexual male, I cannot speak for my fellow humans who are directly affected by the daily barrage of insult or even vitriol coming from people ignorant or in denial. Growing up Jewish in a Christian community, I sometimes encountered small scale anti-semitism from acquaintances. Once I was asked for a quarter by a boy, who, after I gave it to him, turned to his friend and said, “See, he’s not a Jew.” I didn’t try to wake him up to the reality that I was, in fact, a Jew.

Being “woke” does not have to be something to fear or criticize or legislate against. C’mon West Virginia, wake up—it’s just being decent.

No, being calm and polite does not excuse monstrous behavior!

The Tuesday, 9/22/22 Charleston Gazette Mail carried my letter to the editor responding to an editorial by the VP of HD Media and Executive Editor who wrote an opinion piece PRAISING ROGER HANSHAW SPEAKER OF THE WV HOUSE (R-CLAY) BECAUSE HE WAS SO CALM AND POLITE AS HE RAMMED THROUGH AN ABORTION BAN (WITH NO PUBLIC INPUT OR EXPERT TESTIMONY)! I'll post the text of his piece and the text of mine below. The hell if I'm going to make anybody pay to read them. I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!

Lee Wolverton: A speaker standing tall in the mire (Opinion)

Sep 16, 2022

Before writing that which I am about to write, I must do that which I am loathe to do regarding anyone holding political office. I must ask forgiveness. I must ask this because I am about to write that which I rarely find cause to write regarding elected officials. That is:

Roger Hanshaw appears from where I sit to be that rare sort in the modern milieu: A leader of keen intellect and high integrity and a respecter of law, propriety and decorum. The speaker of the West Virginia House and a Republican from Clay County, Hanshaw representsconservatism of yore — principled, thoughtful and reasoned.

This does not indicate I concur with him on the issues. It means rather that, observing him from afar, I find him to be what politics in West Virginia and America badly need in both parties — men and women of intelligence, skill and decency.

Those traits are virtually absent across the political spectrum, which is why I must ask forgiveness. Getting praise from the editor overseeing news operations at the Charleston Gazette-Mail and Herald-Dispatch, especially the former, is for a Republican in this state like getting a kiss from your sister after learning she contracted the flu.

For that reason and others, I am generally disinclined in this space to single out for praise or criticism individual officeholders below the rank of governor. It is more apropos to my thinking to opine broadly on the issues of the moment, and, of course, the issue of the moment is that onetime third rail known as abortion. Plenty of others are sounding off on that topic. Another voice would only add to the multitudes.

In Hanshaw’s case, I am compelled to deviate from custom because he is emblematic of something lost not only in politics and American culture but across the wider expanse of Western civilization. The human species long has been infected by liars, cheats and chiselers.

They will always be among us. But their successes once were fleeting. Corruption empowered and emboldened crooks such as William M. “Boss” Tweed, Richard M. Nixon and Arch A. Moore Jr., but it also eventually ensnared them.

People in power long have bullied others, but they once understood that public boorishness was bad politics. Lyndon Johnson on the Democratic side and Nixon on the Republican were presidents notoriously vulgar privately but publicly restrained because the lines of acceptable conduct were plainly delineated in American society.

All this has given way to a perversion of Tammy Wynette’s “Stand by Your Man” ode to domestic stupidity. Constituents no longer give a damn whether a carpet-bagging lawmaker is being investigated by the Congressional Ethics Office for buying Chick-fil-A sandwiches with campaign donation money. They care only that he voted against an infrastructure bill, not because of the legislation’s lacking merit but merely because its passage would represent a victory for the leader of the opposing party. That’s their principle: Shaft the other guy, always.

Hanshaw provides welcome contrast to this manner of thinking, partly because he has manners. With grace and dignity, he leads a state House where chaos would reign without him and surely will if he is toppled as speaker. This observation follows Tuesday’s rancor, when shouts of protest filled the House before lawmakers approved one of the strictest abortion bans in America. Hanshaw responded with typical calm before ordering the protesters removed in an affair that could have been avoided had the vote swiftly taken place instead of being preceded by floor speeches that stirred already raw emotions.

Engineering a quick vote would have necessitated Hanshaw performing greater feats of herding cats on the right than possible in current conditions. West Virginia’s state House no longer is a legislative chamber but a theater of the rabid in a Republican Vanity Fair that makes the one of allegory look like a bastion of tranquility and virtue.

Somehow, Hanshaw has navigated this Slough of Ordure avoiding both stain and stench. The same can be said neither of his counterpart in the state Senate nor of others in the upper chamber who were sullied by their own filth during their profane taunting of their House Republican colleagues last year over state income taxes.

West Virginia and America could do with a great many more like Hanshaw. One among his own party is angling to unseat him as speaker. What that delegate should be doing is supporting Hanshaw, learning from him and seeking to emulate him. That would add another adult to the one standing now among toddlers riding a supermajority high and riding West Virginia straight into Bat Earth.

Lee Wolverton is the vice president of news and executive editor of HD Media. He can be reached at 304-348- 4802 or lwolverton@hdmediallc.com.

My response:

I am flabbergasted by HD Media's VP of News and Executive Editor, Lee Wolverton's piece in Saturday, September 17th's Gazette-Mail in praise of the politeness of Republican House Speaker Roger Hanshaw during the passage of House Bill 302.

The bill outlaws abortion in WV except in very narrow circumstances that will exclude many or most victims of rape of incest and force doctors to make life and death decisions under penalty of losing their licenses or even prosecution. This bill will result in unfathomable misery for many West Virginians and their families, who, if they can't travel to a place where abortion is legal, and even if they can, may lose their health or lives. Hanshaw brought the revised bill to the floor without allowing the public more than a couple days to read it. No committees reviewed it, no medical experts were publicly consulted, and the public had no opportunity to comment.

Hanshaw, the legislators who voted for it, and the governor who signed it will have blood on their hands. There's nothing polite about that.

Paul Epstein, Charleston, WV

No, Democrats are not socialists

 No, Democrats are not socialists and are not trying to turn America into a socialist or communist country like Cuba, Venezuela, China or the former Soviet Union.

Countries like that not only own and control almost all business and industry, but their political systems consist of one party, making them authoritarian governments, not democracies.

Democrats, like Republicans, believe that capitalism makes for a better economic system because private ownership of business and industry unleashes competition and allows individuals to profit from their labor. Democrats and Republicans disagree about how much business and industry should be taxed and regulated and how much government should be involved in helping those who need help, not on whether our government should own business and industry.

When I was a teenager in the 1960s, Republicans and many Democrats railed against communism, an ideology that encouraged revolution. Many European countries had (and still have) socialist political parties that lobbied for more “social welfare,” in the form of free health care, higher education and, sometimes, child care or other social programs. We had programs that people referred to as social welfare in the United States, as well, to support poor families with food stamps and cash assistance, although, under Ronald Reagan, many of them were discontinued or began to require recipients to work or go to school to get assistance.

Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid were all called socialist programs by many Republicans when they were passed.

Bill Clinton tried to pass universal health care, but advertising campaigns funded by the health insurance industry and some doctors’ groups called it socialism and defeated it, because it would have put most health insurance companies out of business. Barack Obama managed to pass the Affordable Care Act, in part, by allowing private insurance companies to continue to manage payment for health care, making the “socialist” label harder to deploy. Turns out that Americans agree that profit should not be the motivating factor when their lives and health are at stake.

Is President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan, which includes the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the jobs and “human infrastructure” bill, an example of socialism? No. It’s a perfect example of the Democratic Party’s long-term effort to make taxation more fair by increasing taxes on the richest among us, which includes hedge funds and corporations that, over time, have been rewarded by Republican tax breaks.

The money collected will be used to rebuild roads and bridges and help working families in a variety of ways, including lowering the cost of child care, prescription drugs and higher education.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., has objected to the overall price tag, suggesting that increasing taxes might slow the economy. He has specifically objected to spending money for incentives to transition to clean energy. Manchin knows that the free market — capitalism — has been killing coal jobs for decades. First, it was because of mechanization and, more recently, competition from cheaper sources of energy, like natural gas. Solar and wind are getting even cheaper. Manchin is making a grave mistake by not factoring in the cost of continuing as we are: more floods, extreme weather, fires, droughts, extinctions, rising sea levels, etc.

Like Gov. Jim Justice and his hand-picked Public Service Commission, which recently stuck West Virginians with higher electricity bills for the next 20 years simply to keep coal-burning power plants running, Manchin suggests that quickly transitioning to clean energy is too progressive, or even socialist. It’s not. Transitioning as soon as possible to clean energy is sanity. It is insane not to.

This IS Who We Are (at least some of us)

 

 

Fellow West Virginians, we have come through four years of a presidency that forced us to take positions that starkly shine light on differences in our beliefs, derived from sets of so-called facts that describe our world in starkly different ways and lead us to see it, each other, and the possibilities for what lies ahead in profoundly different ways. 

High falutin’ language? I must be a Yankee, or a college man, maybe even a lawyer or a Jew. Guilty on 3 counts. Born and raised in Pennsylvania, but I lived in WV—on 17 acres in Roane County— for 18 years until 1992, and in Charleston since then. Despite the fact that I’ve lived here longer than most born and raised here, I am not considered a West Virginian by many. As to Jewishness, yes, by birth, though I do not practice any religion, preferring to live my life following what I consider basic human morality: honesty, helpfulness, loving and forgiving as much as possible.

I attended WVSU (College, then) and Marshall University (COGS, then) as a young working parent, completing undergraduate and graduate degrees in elementary education. I taught at Clendenin Elementary school for 7 years and Ruffner Elementary in Charleston for 18 years. I was a founding member and first president of FOOTMAD, the Friends of Old Time Music and Dance, and have played traditional WV string band music and other styles in bands all over the East and Midwest, and many years ago in Greece and Turkey on a U.S.O. tour where I remember meeting a young soldier on an island off the coast of Greece at a satellite communications site who grew up a couple miles from where my wife and I were raising a baby and growing vegetables. 

When we meet on the street, we say howdy, talk about the weather, our families, our health, and the state of the roads. But if we veer into politics or the news, it’s not long before our conversation may become suspicious or angry. Each person makes statements about the facts that they believe and the sources where they get them. The facts don’t agree, and my sources, which are usually called the “mainstream media,” are called fake news by the other, while his or her sources are usually a website, a friend, neighbor, or family neighbor they know, or one of a few cable news networks they trust.

That is the end of the conversation for me. At that point, I say, “It’s been great seeing you and I’m glad you told me what you think, but if we can’t agree on what sources can provide trusted facts, then there’s really no way we can have a productive discussion.”

I have learned this lesson online. I often post what I consider articles from trusted sources to counter what I consider falsehoods or articles that make unlikely or wrong conclusions based on known facts. I do that even though I know I won’t change the mind of people making false claims. I hope someone who isn’t so steeped in alt-beliefs will be exposed to another view.

Senator Shelley Moore Capito, among others including Joe Biden, has described the 1/6/21 attack on the Capitol as “not who we are.” While I’m glad Capito is willing to call out violence against the Capitol where she was briefly in danger, that IS who some of us are. Despite our mostly white, rural demographic, West Virginians include a multitude of kinds of people who believe in multiple things. I think that Shelley would agree that many, if not all, of those who entered the Capitol acted deplorably. Many wore or carried symbols associating them with far right groups, including Proud Boys, KKK, Nazis, the Confederacy. The group included racists, women haters, terrorists, and people who want to destroy United States government and remake it in their own image. Only a few West Virginians may behave that deplorably, though we elected a state representative who was among them and a president who incited them.

So it’s time to acknowledge who we are and talk about who we want us to be. How can we educate, or “deprogram” or change minds of those who have deplorable beliefs if we just tell people they are not us—they are “Other?” Accepting who they are does not mean we don’t ask them to change. When an evangelical Christian meets a non believer who they believe will go to hell, they presumably don’t call for them to be locked up or banished. They invite them in, offer food, companionship, love, and song, hoping to persuade them their way is better. They acknowledge they’re not perfect, “We are all sinners,” they say. Well, maybe it’s time to take a page from them.

In West Virginia, almost 70% voted for Donald Trump this year. Who are they? They are us.

But they have been told by media they consume and their political leadership, repeated by friends and family, many of the following lies:

Liberal and Progressive Democrats are Socialists or Communists 

Most Democrats accept some ideas that Socialists have, such as government sponsored health care, Democrats don’t want government to take over factories and ban private ownership.

Liberal and Progressive Democrats want to defund the police.

 Few Democrats use this phrase. Most who do mean that they believe police are expected to solve too many problems they’re not suited for, like mental health problems and homelessness—programs that need better funding, and some of the funding could come from police departments relieved of those burdens.

Liberal and Progressive Democrats want to take away our guns 

Many Democrats support laws to improve gun safety such as requiring background checks, doing away with loopholes, banning large clips and/or assault weapons only useful for killing people.

Liberal and Progressive Democrats want to take away our health care or force us to use government health care 

Millions of people have gained insurance and affordable health care under Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, and the Affordable Care Act-Obamacare. Republicans have fought these programs and tried to destroy them. Their philosophy is that people are responsible for their own health, and should spend their own money on their health when they get sick.

Liberal and Progressive Democrats are anti-coal. 

Democrats believe that all workers deserve safe working environments and pay that can support a family. They support coal miners in forming unions to fight for safety and good pay. Coal companies must be held liable for the damage that coal mining and coal burning do to our environment. If Coal companies cannot produce and use coal safely and cleanly compared to other forms of energy, they will go out of business. We must insist they pay to clean up their messes. We must help workers losing jobs in coal industries to learn and find good paying jobs to replace those lost to cleaner, more affordable energy.

Liberal and Progressive Democrats kill babies. They are pro-abortion

Almost no one is "pro-abortion". Democrats acknowledge that not every pregnancy is viable, safe, or healthy. Many pregnancies result in unavoidable miscarriages, which is often painful and disappointing to the woman, and perhaps her partner. Some pregnancies must be forced to be miscarried--aborted--to protect the life or health of the woman. Some pregnancies, especially those caused by rape or incest, or perpetrated on underage girls as young as nine or ten are dangerous to the mental state of women forced to carry a fetus to term. A "pro-life" position should consider these issues and "pro-choice" proponents believe women should make these decisions in consultation with their doctor. 

Liberal and Progressive Democrats are evil pedophiles: 

The Q-anon conspiracy is a dangerous fantasy. People sometimes believe literally any whacky idea made up and promoted on the Internet. Like an addiction to drugs, sex, gambling, or membership in gangs, militias, or cults, belief in conspiracy theories like this give people a high and creates a community that supports each other’s ideas. 

I’m doing the easy work of defining problems. We need people to solve problems. Howard Swint (who contributes op-eds to the WV Gazette-Mail), recently reached out to me to suggest we form a diverse group of West Virginians to travel around talking to people who have not met many people different than themselves to talk and get to know one another. I told him that after I got my vaccination, I would consider doing that.

Impeachment Report: Key Findings of Fact

As a public service, here is a 1000 word excerpt from the 300+ page report containing the findings in a nutshell. To read the full report: click here

Key Findings of Fact 

(excerpt of the Trump-Ukraine Impeachment Inquiry Report of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee)

Based on witness testimony and evidence collected during the impeachment inquiry, the Intelligence Committee has found that:

I.     Donald J. Trump, the 45th President of the United States—acting personally and through his agents within and outside of the U.S. government—solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.  The President engaged in this course of conduct for the benefit of his reelection, to harm the election prospects of a political opponent, and to influence our nation’s upcoming presidential election to his advantage.  In so doing, the President placed his personal political interests above the national interests of the United States, sought to undermine the integrity of the U.S. presidential election process, and endangered U.S. national security.

II.     In furtherance of this scheme, President Trump—directly and acting through his agents within and outside the U.S. government—sought to pressure and induce Ukraine’s newly-elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to publicly announce unfounded investigations that would benefit President Trump’s personal political interests and reelection effort.  To advance his personal political objectives, President Trump encouraged the President of Ukraine to work with his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani.

III.     As part of this scheme, President Trump, acting in his official capacity and using his position of public trust, personally and directly requested from the President of Ukraine that the government of Ukraine publicly announce investigations into (1) the President’s political opponent, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. and his son, Hunter Biden, and (2) a baseless theory promoted by Russia alleging that Ukraine—rather than Russia—interfered in the 2016 U.S. election.  These investigations were intended to harm a potential political opponent of President Trump and benefit the President’s domestic political standing. 

IV.     President Trump ordered the suspension of $391 million in vital military assistance urgently needed by Ukraine, a strategic partner, to resist Russian aggression.  Because the aid was appropriated by Congress, on a bipartisan basis, and signed into law by the President, its expenditure was required by law.  Acting directly and through his subordinates within the U.S. government, the President withheld from Ukraine this military assistance without any legitimate foreign policy, national security, or anti-corruption justification.  The President did so despite the longstanding bipartisan support of Congress, uniform support across federal departments and agencies for the provision to Ukraine of the military assistance, and his obligations under the Impoundment Control Act.

V.     President Trump used the power of the Office of the President and exercised his authority over the Executive Branch, including his control of the instruments of the federal government, to apply increasing pressure on the President of Ukraine and the Ukrainian government to announce the politically-motivated investigations desired by President Trump.  Specifically, to advance and promote his scheme, the President withheld official acts of value to Ukraine and conditioned their fulfillment on actions by Ukraine that would benefit his personal political interests: 

A. President Trump—acting through agents within and outside the U.S. government—conditioned a head of state meeting at the White House, which the President of Ukraine desperately sought to demonstrate continued United States support for Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression, on Ukraine publicly announcing the investigations that President Trump believed would aid his reelection campaign.

B. To increase leverage over the President of Ukraine, President Trump, acting through his agents and subordinates, conditioned release of the vital military assistance he had suspended to Ukraine on the President of Ukraine’s public announcement of the investigations that President Trump sought.

C. President Trump’s closest subordinates and advisors within the Executive Branch, including Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Secretary of Energy J. Richard Perry, and other senior White House and Executive Branch officials had knowledge of, in some cases facilitated and furthered the President’s scheme, and withheld information about the scheme from the Congress and the American public. 

VI.     In directing and orchestrating this scheme to advance his personal political interests, President Trump did not implement, promote, or advance U.S. anti-corruption policies.  In fact, the President sought to pressure and induce the government of Ukraine to announce politically-motivated investigations lacking legitimate predication that the U.S. government otherwise discourages and opposes as a matter of policy in that country and around the world.  In so doing, the President undermined U.S. policy supporting anti-corruption reform and the rule of law in Ukraine, and undermined U.S. national security.

VII.     By withholding vital military assistance and diplomatic support from a strategic foreign partner government engaged in an ongoing military conflict illegally instigated by Russia, President Trump compromised national security to advance his personal political interests.

VIII.     Faced with the revelation of his actions, President Trump publicly and repeatedly persisted in urging foreign governments, including Ukraine and China, to investigate his political opponent.  This continued solicitation of foreign interference in a U.S. election presents a clear and present danger that the President will continue to use the power of his office for his personal political gain.

IX.     Using the power of the Office of the President, and exercising his authority over the Executive Branch, President Trump ordered and implemented a campaign to conceal his conduct from the public and frustrate and obstruct the House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry by:

A. refusing to produce to the impeachment inquiry’s investigating Committees information and records in the possession of the White House, in defiance of a lawful subpoena;

B. directing Executive Branch agencies to defy lawful subpoenas and withhold the production of all documents and records from the investigating Committees;

C. directing current and former Executive Branch officials not to cooperate with the Committees, including in defiance of lawful subpoenas for testimony; and

D. intimidating, threatening, and tampering with prospective and actual witnesses in the impeachment inquiry in an effort to prevent, delay, or influence the testimony of those witnesses.

In so doing, and despite the fact that the Constitution vests in the House of Representatives the “sole Power of Impeachment,” the President sought to arrogate to himself the right to determine the propriety, scope, and nature of an impeachment inquiry into his own misconduct, and the right to deny any and all information to the Congress in the conduct of its constitutional responsibilities.

What If We Believed Him?

The phone call that pushed a CIA employee to blow the whistle on President Trump’s illegal effort to withhold money for Ukraine’s military until their president agreed to investigate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, was “perfect” according to Trump.

The Washington Post has now counted over 13,000 false or misleading claims by the president in his 1000 days as president, but for just a moment, let’s suspend our disbelief and imagine that he believes he is telling the truth and truly believes his phone call with the President of Ukraine was perfect.

Let’s imagine that he’s telling the truth as he sees it when he says that he didn’t green light Turkey to invade Syria when he pulled our troops back. We should believe that he had no idea President Erdogan would send tanks and troops and vicious militias pouring over the border to slaughter the Kurdish fighters who had until then been our front line in the fight against ISIS. Let’s imagine Trump truly believes the Kurds are “happy” about watching their fellow soldiers and their wives, mothers, and children die and lose their homes as they run for their lives.

Let’s look back over the past three years and see if we can muster belief in Trump’s proclamations that we no longer need to be concerned about North Korea’s possession of nuclear weapons and continued program of missile development because Kim Jong-un has written him beautiful letters and Trump has fallen in love with him.

And the beautiful tariffs that Trump has levied on friends and foes alike. Let’s accept that he truly believes that it is they who are paying them, not us, the people of the United States and the companies who import those goods. Yes, let’s pretend it’s China paying those taxes before we buy them….at a higher price than before.

We must accept Trump’s assessment that the farmers are totally okay with losing billions in sales of crops that China is no longer buying in order to retaliate against the tariffs because the Trump administration is giving them welfare payments to partially make up for it. Of course many of them will lose their farms in the meantime, but their sacrifice is for the good of the country in our President’s views, so we should believe that.

And all the criminals and rapists he has assured us are pouring over our southern border — they look like women and children desperate to escape gang violence and poverty to us, but perhaps we need special glasses or something so we can see them as he does.

Not to mention the good people on both sides in Charlottesville. Those young men carrying tiki torches chanting “Jews Will Not Replace Us” may be good to their families and probably even the people they go to church with if they attend. We should believe that Trump is able to look beyond their hatred of everyone who isn’t white or Christian and see the good in them.

Yes, perhaps we should follow Trump’s call to end this divisive period in our history. We can learn to follow our Dear Leader and think Right Thoughts, see his Stable Genius and benefit from his Great and Unmatched Wisdom….or not.

We could recognize the truth—that he’s a liar and a criminal and deserves to be impeached. And if his lackeys in the Republican Party can’t muster the courage to do that, we can vote them and him out by the biggest margin in history next November. Now that would be perfect.

Trump's Racist Tweets: Are his Defenders Racists or Cowards?

Trump’s Tweets from Sunday, July 14

“So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly....and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how…it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!”

Republicans (all but 4 of 197) voted to defend the President's racist tweets and words directed at 4 Congresswomen of color (all US citizens). He said basically they should "go back" to where they come from (3 were born here, but have at least one parent born in another country). 

Most Republicans have tied themselves into pretzels in defense of the President. Some of their weak or fact deficient arguments are listed below and disputed in italics.

He might not have been talking about those 4 Congresswomen, since he didn’t name them in the tweet. “In those tweets, I see nothing that references anybody’s race — not a thing — I don’t see anyone’s name being referenced in the tweets, but the president’s referring to people, congresswomen, who are anti-American,” Patrick Duffy (R-WI)

The President himself clarified that in a tweet Tuesday night: “So great to see how unified the Republican Party was on today’s vote concerning statements I made about four Democrat Congresswomen.”

“The President is not a racist,” Mitch McConnell said. “I don’t have a racist bone in my body,” the President said.

The Resolution does not say the President is a racist, it says he used racist words to talk about members of Congress. Behavioral psychologists have revealed that most all of us have implicit racial biases, which means we must each be vigilant to recognize and resist that in our speech and thoughts. Obviously, the President does not make that effort and frequently makes statements that many people view as racist such as referring to African countries as s*ithole countries, Mexican immigrants as rapists, etc. 

But he just said they should go back and fix those countries, then they could come back here and show  us how it’s done. He wasn’t saying that they should leave permanently. Representative Harris (R-MD) went so far as to say, "He could have meant go back to the district they came from--to the neighborhood they came from,"

Three of the four Congresswomen were born in the U.S., so is Trump saying that the country they came from, the U.S., that he presides over, is a complete and total catastrophe, the most corrupt and inept in the world (he has actually said similar words about the U.S. in the past)? Of course that doesn’t make sense—presumably he meant the countries their families came from before they came to the U.S. (for Occasio-Cortez, that is still the U.S.—her mother was born in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, and anyone born there is a U.S. citizen). 

When did “Love it or leave it” become racist? “I say it all the time,” said the President.

It becomes racist when out of all the people in the United States (all of whom are descended from people of other countries except Native Americans), out of all the people in the United States Congress (some of whom were born in other countries or are 2nd generation citizens) who are critical of the President or his policies, you direct those words only at people of color. 

But some of them said awful things about the President and used profane language, we should be passing a resolution condemning their words. And some of them have said they were Socialist. And some have said things about Israel that are anti-Semitic and we didn’t pass a resolution condemning them. They even accused the Speaker of racism for calling them out. Maybe we should condemn her. (This summarizes the argument of many Republicans on the House floor)

This Resolution concerns the President’s words used against members of the House of Representatives. The President’s words matter more than those of a freshman Congresswoman because he speaks for the whole nation, he is supposed to speak for all of us and the rest of the world is listening. By not signing onto this resolution, Republicans in Congress have indicated to all the black and brown people of this nation, to all the Muslims, or really any citizen, that if they criticize the President or the policies he supports, they are not welcome here and should leave. His words in the tweet and at other times have told the world that not only does the U.S. not want to accept travelers from Muslim nations, does not want immigrants from Hispanic or Muslim or majority Black countries, but that we would like to send people descended from people of those nations back. The underlying message is a full endorsement of White Supremacy.

Now, I’m going to mount a defense of the President. He was just kidding. Seriously, he sees himself as a stand up comic, a performer, an entertainer. The whole rant of three tweets that he probably composed in bed on Sunday morning ends with a punchline: “you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!”

Yes, hardly a belly laugh, but I didn’t say he was funny, just that he thinks he is. Because he thought it would be funny to suggest that Pelosi would love it if these four women who have been grabbing so much attention and creating headlines about a rift among Democrats would go far away. 

Of course, if he had come out later that day and said, “Yes, I see how people might take this as racist and I apologize. I was just trying to make a joke,” the outrage might have died down without a resolution condemning his “racist tweets.” But we all know by now that’s not he operates, so he doubled and tripled down, threatening Republicans who didn’t defend him and calling the “squad” anti-American and women who hate “our country.” 

My defense is really no defense. What I’m saying is that Trump is a racist who often makes racist jokes. And thank goodness, today in America, a lot of people are willing to call him out for that. Those who haven’t should get some sensitivity training. Voters should send them that message by sending them back--to their neighborhoods--in 2020.

ps--I created a petition on Change.org to support the House resolution condemning Trump's racist tweets. I encourage you to read the text of the resolution I copy/pasted there and sign on...and share with friends. We should all "sign on" to the resolution. Click here to view/sign

Barr's "Summary" is Spin

When the Barr letter to Congress with its summary of the Mueller Report’s main conclusion was released on Sunday, March 24, I took early media reports on it at face value and said it's time to pivot from "need to impeach" to "need to defeat." I still think that's probably going to be the end result, but I view the Barr memo as a propaganda victory, not the end of the line on the crimes this president and his campaign may have committed in getting help from Russia and trying to cover it up/obstruct justice. The Barr summary is a lawyerly piece of writing that must be viewed as a partisan document and an attempt to spin the Mueller report as an exoneration, when it clearly is not. 

Because of the way the Barr summary is written--carefully and lawyerly--the media (including some NPR news people this morning) has been largely snookered into saying things like, "there's no evidence of collusion," and "Trump did not obstruct justice." Even Barr's summary does not say that. 

Barr quotes Mueller to say they did not "establish" that anyone in the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with “the Russian government in its election interference activities." What does the word "establish" mean in this context? It means there is evidence, but not enough evidence to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. 

And why not? Mueller does not rule out obstruction of justice, though Barr tries to, by "noting" that without an "underlying crime" it is hard to establish "corrupt intent." But what if some of the evidence of obstruction is dangling a pardon to keep Manafort and others quiet? Manafort offered to cooperate with Mueller and then told lies. Why? Loyalty. Because he expects a pardon? Someday, maybe the whole truth will come out--but we deserve whatever truth is in the full Mueller report, and we should be wary of Barr's summary which is in no way the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Bush 41 No Saint

This last week there has been deserved praise for a President who exemplified what it means to be presidential. He even made sure that the least presidential President in recent history, or perhaps all our history, had to sit in the front row and draw the inevitable conclusion that no one would be saying those words at his funeral.

But now that he's in the ground, I want to remind those who may have forgotten or never have known that he was not such a great man in the eyes of many for good reasons. I'm of the opinion that no President escapes the office with clean hands (I don't know, maybe Carter? I imagine we'll soon have to confront his legacy). Many lefties criticize Obama for his drone program that resulted in civilian deaths and think he was much too soft on Wall Street execs during the Great Recession. I won't get into what the conservatives will say about him! But Bush 41 was no saint. The test of a president, I think, is not how polite they are or how much they love their families, you expect anyone who is elected President to clear that bar (and Trump trips on it....), it's how they impact the lives of Americans and people around the world.

Bush became President with dog whistles he used to appeal to the same racist underbelly of America that Trump speaks to with a bullhorn and his Twitter feed. The "Willie Horton" ad showing a threatening image of a black man was not just an ad accusing Dukakis (outsider? funny name? maybe not a true American?) of being weak on crime because as governor he oversaw a common prison furlough program that failed to prevent a rape and murder, he railed about it at every campaign stop, making  "Willie Horton (into) Dukakis's running mate," as his campaign manager, Lee Atwater boasted.

People with AIDS and their loved ones got no help from '41. He told them they ought to change their "lifestyle." He brutally pursued the war on drugs that Reagan had begun, putting nothing into helping addicts, doubling spending on "more prisons, more jails, more courts, more prosecutors,"  He vetoed civil rights legislation. He encouraged Iraqi Shiites to rebel, and failed to come to their aid when Sadaam Hussein butchered them. He pardoned his Secretary of Defense on the eve of a trial that might have implicated him in criminal acts as Vice President. But he passed the Americans with Disability Act and navigated the end of the Cold War skillfully, which could have ended in hot wars. He deserves his ranking somewhere in the middle of best to worst Presidents of the U.S.

You can't blame the father on the sins of the son, but does anyone think G.W. Bush would have ever been elected if he hadn't been H.W.'s son? Their legacies are inexorably tied together. 41 brags that he left 43 alone to make his own decisions. I think all of us probably agree that we wish he'd been more forceful in warning him off his invasion of Iraq. Perhaps W would have listened to the father he now claims to have had such respect for if he had forthrightly confronted him with what everyone knows were his unspoken beliefs in the foolhardiness of that adventure that has shaped the Middle East in ways W's little brain could not imagine.

When Republican Lies Win, Freedom Loses

I wrote this in response to a Star Parker column that appeared in my local newspaper, The Charleston Gazette-Mail on November 29. We have an editorial page that has liberal views on the left side and conservative on the right. Here's a link to Parker's article: When Democrats Win, Freedom Loses

Star Parker is a rarity, an African American conservative Republican. As such, she is a valued commentator for them on issues of diversity. Unlike Trump, she doesn’t simply tell whoppers to keep her followers from the truth, she uses “spin” to deftly paint orange and suggest it’s green. In a column titled “National Democrats a Threat to Freedom,” she demonstrates her skill.

 She describes the diversity of the Democratic Party’s choices in the recent election including 105 women, 55 blacks (the Republicans elected no black candidates to Congress) and 14 Asians. She then makes the outrageous claim that because they are Democrats, they all think alike and are therefore not diverse. As if all the white male Republicans who were elected think in diverse ways? Sorry, Star, diversity of skin color, ancestry, gender identification, and socioeconomic status, means that the Democrats coming to Congress represent millions of people who live a different experience of America every day than the wealthy white Republicans whose interests you serve.

After redefining diversity, she redefines freedom as freedom from help from the federal government. If you’re getting help from the federal government to pay for your health care, that’s losing freedom. Or college grants, loans—giving control of your life to the government. No, we need to starve social programs that help people with health care, education, poverty and hunger. We will help them “by believing in them, by granting them freedom to take responsibility for their own life (sic).” Republicans grandly grant you the freedom to remain poor, to have to struggle even harder for the education to lift yourself from poverty. You deserve  freedom to choose between needed medication and feeding your children!


Finally, she picks up her Photoshop brush to paint all Democrats as anti-religious, secular humanist socialists. This is more of a Donald Trump style lie. I don’t know the religious affiliations of all the Democrats elected in the recent elections, but I’d be willing to bet a lot of money that the great majority, like the majority of all Americans, are Christians. I would also bet that they all believe in upholding the Constitution, which guarantees freedom of religion for all and a separation of church and state. Star Parker is absolutely right about one thing, however: Democrats are laying the groundwork to replace Trump with their nominee in 2020 if he hasn’t resigned or been impeached before then.

Who is Responsible for American Carnage?

My brother and his family, four children and two grandchildren, live in Israel. Sometimes people ask me if I worry about their safety because of the possibility of terrorism or a missile sent from Gaza or one of the surrounding Arab nations. No, I really don’t. Not because it’s not a possibility, but because the odds are less any of them will be killed or injured that way than that they or I or any of us in the United States will be injured or killed in a car accident…or here, in a deadly shooting. 

This week’s deadly mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh hits home for me in several ways. Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill community is an area I have visited several times over the years when my band visited the area to play for dances. I’ve walked the two block long business district of small shops and eaten in its restaurants. I’ve spent the night in homes in the area. And I know there are people among my circle of friends there who attend the Tree of Life Synagogue. I am seeing their posts on Facebook telling friends and family they are safe or noting the loss of someone they knew. 

Churches, synagogues, mosques, any place of worship are supposed to places of safety, of spirituality, of peace. Attacks on them, on the people who attend them, must require an extra measure of hate if such a thing is possible. Your “average” mass murderer has become enraged with people at his workplace or in the country in general when their sad, lonely, depressed and angry emotional lives cause them to lash out at their imagined enemies.

Then they procure or gather their arsenal for attack. And here’s where the difference between gun laws in Israel and the United States make Israeli’s so much safer. If you live or travel in Israel, you will see guns, even semi-automatic weapons, everywhere. Soldiers and police on or off duty carry them. Israel might as well have our 2nd Amendment citing the necessity for a well regulated militia as a justification for citizens to bear arms. Nearly every citizen in Israel, male and female, is required to serve in the military after they graduate high school, and many continue their service in the reserve, sometimes keeping service weapons in their homes. Yet Israel has strict gun control laws and a firearm homicide rate 1/4 of that in the U.S. “Israelis must meet a detailed list of criteria to be allowed to own a firearm. They must ask the state for a license, are permitted only one gun at a time, and must even ask for permission to sell their gun. And the Firearms Licensing Department is no rubber stamp: Roughly 40 percent of requests are rejected” (https://www.timesofisrael.com/comparing-america-to-israel-on-gun-laws-is-dishonest-and-revealing/). 

We’ve experienced two attempts at mass murder as we approach the 2018 midterm elections, elections many view as “the most important in our lifetimes,” a description usually reserved for presidential elections. One, thankfully, has been unsuccessful—the attempts at pipe bomb assassinations mailed to critics of the president by a man whose love of Trump is apparently only exceeded by his hatred of the targets of Trump’s verbal attacks. The other it appears, involves a man with a hatred for Jews who believed his murderous attack would prevent Latin American immigrants in a caravan approaching the United States seeking asylum from “invading” the United States and killing Americans. His animus was directed at a Jewish aid organization that is focused on providing services to refugees. 

It would be easy to say that this is just a crazy idea concocted by a deranged mind if we didn’t have a president, backed up by a right wing media machine, who calls the stream of refugees an “invasion” that contains terrorists from the Middle East and he must send the army to deal with them.

Trump has said the absolute minimum of the required words about these crimes and called for unity, and in his next breaths has continued his attacks on his critics in the media and across the spectrum of political ideas. He has correctly called anti-Semitism a scourge, while not reducing his anti-immigrant rhetoric. Trump may not be legally responsible for these criminal acts, but he is guilty of inspiring them.

Make America Great...for Everyone

Is America great? Has it always been great? Or did it fall out of greatness awaiting President Trump to put it right again? To answer without resorting to knee-jerk patriotism (yes, always has been and always will be great!) or knee-jerk criticism (no, cue list of every sin our government has ever committed), we have to look back at our history to honor our achievements and acknowledge our mistakes. We also have to acknowledge that greatness is not perfection, and that perfection can be strived for, but will never be achieved.

America’s Founding Fathers (sexist?) built a new system of government through a process of debate and compromise and eventual consensus, which was great. The first government, ruled by the Articles of Confederation wasn’t great, though. The federal government could not raise money through taxes and depended on voluntary contributions from the states. There was no executive or judicial branch. So the Constitution was written and ratified 12 years later. And within a couple of years the Bill of Rights, ten amendments protecting individual liberties, was passed. Great then? Yes and no. Certainly for property owning white men, early America was pretty great. In most cases, they were the only ones allowed to vote, go to college, own property. Universal suffrage was not one of the rights included in the Bill of Rights. And then there’s the little matter of slavery and the three-fifths rule, which counted enslaved people differently than others in creating Congressional districts. So, it’s a little hard to promote America’s greatness while slavery existed. Oh, and our treatment of Native Americans. When other countries treat groups like we treated Native Americans, we call it ethnic cleansing or genocide. We excuse ourselves by saying it was a different time and that slavery and colonialism were widely practiced in the world. 

Historians emphasize wars. Our Civil War showed an inability to solve our “original sin” of slavery peacefully, is surely not a measure of our greatness, and our various wars of expansion in the 1800’s aren’t either, though there may still be some who subscribe to the “manifest destiny” theory that God granted America to white Europeans from “sea to shining sea.” Our interventions in WWI and WWII demonstrated a great ability to mobilize massive armies and coordinate with our allies to defeat enemies around the world. By the end of WWII, with much of the world a smoking ruin, our soil and industries virtually untouched, and the only country with “The Bomb,” we looked and felt like a great power. This is the America Donald Trump, the son of a successful real estate developer, was born into and remembers as great. 

But inner city and rural poverty, discrimination and racial segregation meant that it was not great for everyone, even for many returning soldiers. Many women, having kept our factories humming while men went off to war, lost their jobs and were told to go back to housekeeping and raising babies. And the Cold War, when we fought to prop up corrupt governments in Vietnam and elsewhere against the expansion of Soviet and Chinese Communism, ultimately showed the limits of the American military. Not so great.

It’s hard to make the case that America was great for most African Americans, for Native Americans, for many women, and even for many poor people in America for most of its history. And yet, America, as a country, has done great things during the last two hundred plus years. Our inventiveness, hard work, and productivity have produced the most thriving economy in history, creating a robust middle class. We’ve made great strides in education, technology, medicine, science, energy, and yes, eventually we keep making improvements in the areas of civil rights and equality for all. And that is pretty great. And our Democracy, with all its flaws, has gradually become more inclusive, our society less racist, our laws more just. 

Most Americans, even, I think, many Trump supporters, realize that President Trump is not great for America. While they may believe that he has their economic interests at heart, they realize that his attacks on anyone who is critical of him are demeaning the office of the presidency. Few Americans are so racist that they support his tirades against Muslims and Mexicans or think that there is equivalency between people marching with Tiki torches and chanting “Jews will not replace us” and those who protest against those ideas. At its greatest, America has shown the world it can unite people to solve problems for its citizens, and yes, absorb immigrants and celebrate their transition into Americans. 

Our court system and the many advocacy organizations that have brought suits in the last two years have shown American greatness by stopping or slowing many of President Trump’s worst executive actions: the Muslim ban, his effort to repeal DACA, the separation of families. However, Republican politicians find themselves in a terrible quandary. So far, very few have shown the courage to stand up to his bullying nature as he hijacked their party through his false promises, propaganda networks, and loyal followers. Some are resigning to avoid having to further compromise their principles, but too many now seem to be bending the limits of our Democracy to protect him: attacking our justice system, threatening the special counsel, seeking to hurriedly install a Supreme Court justice without releasing his full body of work, one who may supply a crucial vote in support of Trump’s executive powers. If they will not rise to the greatness this moment demands, then we Americans must rise up, peacefully, and vote them out, replacing them with a Congress that will hold Trump accountable and investigate his wrongdoings.

Hopefully, this period in the history of our great country will be seen as only a brief detour from the steady progress we have made to make America great…for everyone. 

The End of Rational Discussion?

It's getting increasingly difficult to have anything resembling a rational discussion with people I disagree with in the era of "fake news". The problem of fake news (which at first referred only to stories that were basically completely fabricated, but now is applied to anything people don't think is fully true), is that there is no longer ANY agreement of a neutral arbiter of fact. It used to be that except for outliers in the far right and far left of intellectual discourse, there were certain media outlets that were accepted as Truth Seeking outlets that used a set of Journalistic Practices including trying hard to maintain objectivity and stick to facts, only using the opinions of others in stories and attributing, researching "both or all sides of a story" and to the extent they disagree, offer explanations to attempt to explain why they differ, and seeking corroboration for statements/facts from people with no known ties with the source. 

Media outlets like the NY Times, Washington Post, NPR/PBS, and Network News (ABC, CBS, NBC) were widely considered "mainstream media." When they got something wrong, they tended to all get it wrong together--like the lead up to the Iraq War, in which the false or skewed information being fed to them by the Bush White House was carefully crafted to mislead them, and the number of stories that supported the Bush narrative got better and wider coverage, while stories questioning the intelligence became backpage stories. 

The fact that the mainstream media occasionally makes mistakes does not make them fake news. It's similar to the scientific method, in which accepted science is not called FACT, it is called the PREVAILING THEORY, and other scientists are encouraged to challenge it and if they are able to prove any of it untrue through experimentation that can be replicated, then the theory is revised. In other words Journalism, like Science, seeks Truth, but understands that what is seen as FACT today, may change as new information comes to light.

But there have always been publications and media outlets and governments that instead of using the process of Journalism, use the tactics of PROPAGANDA to push a point of view and/or sell more advertising by getting more readers/viewers. National Enquirer, Fox News, and to some extent other cable news outlets, like MSNBC and even network news, now use many techniques like splashy, misleading headlines, opinion in the guise of news, or blatantly covering only one point of view. 

Because of that, many people who spend time following the right wing outlets like Fox News, Breitbart, and radio opinionators Rush LImbaugh, etc. have been convinced that they can't trust any other media outlets but theirs (and that's the way they see those of us who basically trust mainstream media to fact check and follow journalistic practice). In response to this, many organizations, media based, non-profit org based, and university based, have started fact checking services: PolitiFact, Fact Check.org, Snopes, etc. This was supposed to be that final arbiter and they scrupulously cite their sources and explain all sides of stories. Unfortunately, since they often find the right wing bubble media stories to be false, none of their followers will accept them as neutral arbiters. Hence, I've found it's largely a waste of time to argue with people with points of view that depend on the right wing propaganda machine for information.