Political Discourse 2020

  The Central Question Before Us The essential question of the 2020 presidential campaign is that of determining the key problems this nation needs to tackle within the next 10-20 years and which candidate and political party is best equipped to meet this challenge. No doubt, people differ on identifying these problems and that would be a worthwhile discussion.   Everything else is of a secondary nature. Given the large-scale failure of the federal government to effectively address our current crisis related to the COVID-19 pandemic, any baseline for equipping the nation to meet the challenges of our times will require sound governance, combined with a modicum of national consensus in order to create the political climate to establish solid policy initiatives over a significant period of time.   On these counts, alone, a Biden administration offers the likely prospect that federal positions will be competently filled with seasoned professionals, that cabinet departments...

Biden and Trump:  A Sharp a Contrast as Could Ever Be  When I originally wrote this letter, VP Biden was in the last stages of selecting his own VP running mate. The challenge he faced in ultimately selecting Kamela Harris, was that of negotiating the tension between selecting the person he thought would be best qualified to become president should the occasion arise, and that person who would be most politically palatable, both to the internal constituency of the Democratic Party and to the electorate at large. The quality of discernment that the Biden team exercised in working through this incredibly important selection serves as an indication of the type of governance a Biden administration would bring to the presidency.   This is a quality of mind, I argue, exemplified more fully in his Build Back Better economic policy in planning for a more carbon free economy. The plan includes job creation in the sphere of environmentally friendly manufacturing, high tech resear...

Character Matters The next four years will set the course for much of what follows for this nation’s near-term future for the next 10-20 years. This is what makes the 2020 presidential and congressional elections so consequential. If John McCain or Mitt Romney were the Republican candidate, the presidential race could be largely played out at the level of policy where the differences between Democrats and Republicans are sharp enough. That is because core matters of character formation and fundamental capacity to govern would not need to be addressed. This is obviously not the case with the current president, with the result that the Trump administration is fundamentally averse to putting the national interest at the core of its value system. This is in no small measure, due to Trump’s incapacity to place his own perceived self-interest in any broader frame of reference than his own stilted self. Such a characteristic is tragic in an individual. In a national leader, it is catastrophic...

  The Soul of the Nation is on the Line With both national conventions over, Joe Biden and Donald Trump agree on one thing: the soul of America is on the line in this election. This was brought home recently by MSNBC commentator, Chuck Todd in his montage of clippings from both candidates. Todd, of course, is right in pointing out the obvious, that both campaigns are making this claim. However, in portraying the election in this surface symmetrical manner, Todd did a disservice in failing to highlight the clear distinctions between the candidates. The result is that his news segment reinforced a “bothsidesism,” or “false balance,” reflecting “a media bias in which journalists present an issue as being more balanced between opposing views than the evidence supports” (False balance, Wikipedia). One might conclude from Todd’s depiction that the choices between the candidates are murkier than ever. That, I argue, is far from the case. Contra Todd, the more extensive probing that would ...

  What VP Biden and the Democratic Party Offers Over the past year, concerns have been raised about Joe Biden’s capacity to meet the rigors of an intense political campaign as well as that of governing as the nation’s chief executive for the next four years. These have included questions over his cognitive acuity, given what some view as a visible decline in mental capacities due to the inevitable factor of aging. This negative assumption, based on a pejorative view of ageism, has not gone unchallenged. Other commentary has focused on Biden’s continuing relevance in light of the broad array of issues favored by the progressive constituency of the Democratic Party, as argued by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and their supporters. These issues have been mitigated by Biden’s willingness to engage in critical dialogue with both of these senators and to make modifications in his policy proposals accordingly. It was not until Biden’s capstone victory in the South Carolina primary ...

  Gas Lighter-in-Chief When recently questioned by a reporter on whether he had confronted Russian president, V. Putin about intervening in the 2020 presidential election in his favor, our fabulator-in-chief shifted the blame to the Democrats. According to Trump, it is the “ Democrats [who] are meddling by wanting and insisting on sending mail-in ballots when there’s corruption all over the place” (Politico, 08-10-2020). The question was asked for good reason since National Counterintelligence and Security Center, Bill Evanina, a Trump appointee, noted that US national intelligence sources identified Russia as actively intervening in the campaign in favor of Trump by targeting Biden in 2020 just as they had targeted Clinton in 2016. The rhetorical evil embedded in this quip should not be missed. In “tell[ing]… [us] who was meddling in our elections,” Trump sought to accomplish two goals. The first was to shift the blame for meddling in the elections from the Russians to a ...

  My Critic: Once Again In his praise of the president, a recent writer is obviously referring to Trump’s influence on the economy before the COVID-19 pandemic derailed his number one issue. Even on that, as another reviewer noted, Trump built on the Obama recovery, whose policy focus in 2009 provided the architecture for it, to which I see no evidence that Trump added anything of substance based on any policy orientation. Granted, the unemployment rate continued to fall under Trump, which had little to do with what he did. Moreover, I see no evidence of any contribution on his part to the expansion of per capita income or any resolution of long-term problems associated with the continuous decline of the nation’s manufacturing sector, one that is rooted in the substantial shift to an informational-based economy since the 1970s. Trump’s effort to resolve the current economic crisis seldom goes beyond theatrics, his guttural instincts on trade wars, or his support of rich friends. ...

  Black Lives Matter As noted by more than a few commentators, this nation has reached an inflection point on the crucial matter of race relations in this country.   The killing of George Floyd by Minnesota police officer, Derrick Chauvin, accompanied by the tacit support of three additional officers, was the precipitating event sparking the recent outrage that has spread to every state in this nation as well as throughout the world.   The clarion call of “black lives matters” has become a multiracial mandate, a demand not merely to repudiate police violence against African American men, women, and children, but to insist that this nation take seriously the problem of systemic racism, which has its roots in this nation’s colonial founding, with its persisting tentacles spread throughout this nation’s history, embedded within the Constitution itself, and only partially rectified by the 13 th , 14 th , and 15 th Amendments.   The egregious incident of this most re...

  The Banality of Evil By the time this letter is published, Trump will have been acquitted by the U.S. Senate in his, so-called impeachment trial.   I say, “so-called” because in a 51-49 vote, the Republican senators decided that no witnesses would be allowed.   Neither did the Senate “trial” push for subpoenas on House requested documents.   In a normal trial, both witnesses and documents would be offered as evidence.   Thus, the Trump exoneration is based on a witness free and evidence free show trial, notwithstanding the well-focused fact-based, historically, and constitutionally informed case provided by the House Managers.   It has been widely accepted as a foregone conclusion that the Senate would acquit the president.  It was just as likely that the Senate would not issue subpoenas on the requested documents or support the call for witnesses, though faint hope of the latter was dashed with the no vote of Lamar Alexander and Lisa Murkowski....

  Ideological and Moral Nihilism Underlying Trump's Pandemic Mishandling  It is all-too easy to focus on the many missteps, shifting of blame, and outright lies the Trump administration has propagated on the U.S. public in its handling of the current pandemic crisis. Such a critique would detail the president’s initial dismissal of the COVID-19 crisis and his accusations against the Democrats and the media for perpetuating a hoax by exaggerating the story for the express purpose of making Trump look bad.  One could also point to the lack of clear direction from the federal government in coherently leading the nation through this crisis, the petulant blaming of China, the World Health Organization (WHO), the name calling of governors, and the shaming of reporters for asking legitimate questions.  While for a short time referring to himself as a “wartime president,” in flouting science and wrecking an emerging national consensus on how to address the conjoined health a...

  Nihilist-in-Chief T he strident call to rebellion by President Trump, to “liberate Michigan,” is one of the most nihilistic statements ever uttered by a US commander-in-chief. Its sheer audacity is only attenuated by the psychological deadening of hundreds of outrageous statements and acts this president has perpetuated on this nation during the past three years. This is not to dispute the importance of factoring in the economic turmoil caused by the pandemic crisis and the viability of different regions of the country gradually opening up as local conditions allow. The latter, however, is a prospect that is invariably complicated by the social reality of a highly mobile society.  Clearly, the COVID-19 pandemic offers its own set of unique challenges.  With the flu, there is a vaccine. With the coronavirus there is not.  Moreover, this latter virus is highly contagious, with a death-to-case ratio hovering around 5%. Based on modeling projections compiled by a dr...

  White Evangelicals in Support of Trump:   Conflict Brewing in the Household of Zion My thanks to the East Hartford Gazette editor for publishing Steve Klinger’s excellent editorial, “If only right-minded Republicans would come clean” (03-05). Klinger, a community journalist from New Mexico, nailed it in linking Trump’s base to two major sources.   The one is the religious right which has “turned a blind eye to Trump’s vulgarity, immorality and blatantly un-Christian behavior” based on the dubious claim that our leader-in-chief “was chosen by God” to lead this nation at this particular time.   As proponents of this specious view argue, Trump is a later day Cyrus (see Isaiah 45:1-13) called to liberate the U.S. from the many sources of godless oppression. The other is the ever compliant “GOP,” particularly “its donors and elected leaders,” many of whom dislike a great deal of the president’s behavior and perpetually foul mouth, but are intimidated by his dominance ...

  Xenophobia is the Po int A dictionary definition interprets the word, “xenophobia” as extreme “dislike against people from other countries.” While accurate, this characterization fails to capture the intensity of fear and loathing that provokes outright verbal and physical violence when injected directly into the body politic.   Its close cousin, “demonization,” defined as “the portrayal of something as wicked and threatening,” when enacted in and through our political discourse, often signifies something lethally poisonous, as exemplified in the mind and heart of the 2019 El Paso mass shooter.   To be clear, the shooter, alone was responsible for the carnage rained down on Mexican nationals and US citizens of Mexican descent in the horrific mass killing in El Paso last August.   That said, one cannot simply overlook Trump’s despicable racist rhetoric and his targeting of El Paso as one of the epicenters of “the invasion” at the southern border of dangerous “il...

  Trump is No Comic Relief It is tough to take one’s eyes off what may be Trump’s worst flaw—his character—as reflected in two recent events.   Let us reflect on his retweet of a so-called comedic insinuation linking the Clintons’ to the death of accused child sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein.   Besides the utter absurdity of the accusation, its sheer viciousness demonstrates an amoral emptiness of an obsessed, conspiratorial mind-set honed through years of association with scandal sheets like the National Enquirer and shock jock personalities like Howard Stern.   It would be one thing if that were simply the ravings of a media-obsessed TV reality star, but, sadly, that is no longer the case.   In reflecting the mind of the President of the United States—in all of its official and moral significance—Trump’s embrace of this particular conspiracy is truly appalling.   It is one that should evoke a sense of horror throughout the public that the “we the people...