October 2017 Archives

Dear America,

The Republican Party, though some Republicans have opted out, continues to employ dubious tactics in serving their constituency at the expense of the rest of us.  Senators Corker and Flake aren't the first to see the moral failure of such tactics--of the decline of comity in our legislature, in fact--by declining to run for reelection.  For example, Democratic senator Birch Evans Bayh III, the namesake of his father (though Birch III went by the name Evan) who had also been in Congress, declined to run for reelection for his Senate seat from Indiana in 2010 citing degradation of Senate principles of conduct and political polarization of the electorate that made moderate politics non-viable.  You may remember that 2010 was the year in which the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives back from the Democrats. 

Dismay over our politics may not be unique to a few Republicans, but there has been a paucity of Republicans who are willing to repudiate the now-accepted form of political conduct in what became after 2012 a unified Republican Congress with both houses in Republican control.  Now, under the influence of Donald Trump and his tendency toward prevarication if not outright dishonesty, the conduct of the party in power, unified in its affinity for disingenuous fulminations against anyone who disagrees with them, our government is the most in need of such righteousness of any administration in memory.  The Democrats continue to mouth politically trite indignation, but being the opposing party, their protestations are little more than the expected riposte to most of what the Republicans say.  And regardless of intent, their attempts at defense in the face of a withering assault on their constituents by the conservative captors of the Republican ethos have been to little avail, and cannot be expected to do better if left unfortified in some way.

The only counteractive strategy that might work against the degradation of the American polity in both spirit and method would be a counter-reformation, so to speak. The diffident leadership of the Democratic Party has made fainthearted attempts at fomenting one, but fainthearted is not enough.  Until Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, our former president, Barrack Obama, or some other embodiment of the Democratic platform makes a successful effort to be on the evening news as often as Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell are, fear of the worst in 2018 and 2020 cannot be assuaged.  Someone--and it doesn't appear that there is a Republican who believes in it so it will have to be a Democrat--must reignite what we of the boomer generation knew as the American Ideal as a guiding light for the electorate. Some antidote to the American iteration of the Nazi adopted "blood and soil" mentality of pre-war Germany must be found.  It is not enough to decry what has euphemistically been dubbed the "alt-right."  An alternative must be offered that will meet the needs of our people better than the greed and elitism that American capitalism has gradually fallen into since the New Deal.  In the end, it is all about money, including the xenophobia that is rampant on the right today.  We need someone who can project American secular humanism, which in its essence is what the Democratic Party stands for traditionally.  We need charisma and credibility in our next leader: gravitas and credibility.    I can think of two candidates.

The first who comes to mind is Howard Dean, the physician former governor of Vermont and Democratic presidential candidate.  When he ran for the nomination, he was still too young at heart and his boyish enthusiasm outshined his dignity of purpose.  He's still around, and every once in awhile you can see him on television offering political commentary consistent with the principles we need to revive.  But his viability as a candidate for high office may still be suspect, thus, he would make a sound choice for vice-president.  But for the top spot in the Democratic Party, perhaps someone else would be best.

The country's majority--not those who must be overcome, but the majority--still wants a woman for president.  And as the United States becomes less white and more homogeneous, that is, more like the rest of the world, a person of ethnicity becomes more and more desirable to a larger and larger segment of the population.  So, here's what I propose.  Michelle Obama should let her husband do what Bill Clinton did, which is to go off and do good work as a president emeritus.  Let him go off wind-surfing in Hawaii while she stays home and makes her presence felt to the extent that the news media give her time and her station in our society becomes less inchoate and more present.  She has the gravitas needed.  She has the credibility.  What a refreshing change to the nightly news she would be.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

On Sunday, CBS ran a report on a law passed with overwhelming support in both houses of our Congress that tied the hands of a division of the Drug Enforcement Agency dedicated to interdicting supply of drugs that are being used illicitly or illegally at the lever of its supply, otherwise known as "diversion."  The law was sponsored by two congressional representatives: Republican Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Republican Tom Marino of Pennsylvania.  Its sponsor in The Senate was Orin Hatch of Utah, and Hatch still defends the law even though virtually everyone else defends it, albeit too late to prevent the damage it has already done.  Now, Senator Claire McCaskill has introduced a repeal bill, but in this era of Republican hegemony in Congress, its passage cannot be certain.

In the aftermath of the 60 Minutes report, Marino has withdrawn his name from consideration for the position of "Drug Czar," for which Donald Trump nominated him in September, Trump accepting Marino's decision with a pat on the back professing that Marino is a "good man," a proposition brought into disputability by the report.  Marino still hasn't filled out the preliminary form he must submit to the committee that considers presidential appointments for approval before the Senate votes on them, which raises questions in itself.  Marino's cosponsor, Representative Blackburn, has disavowed the law and supports repeal, but Marino is yet to be heard from.  Senator Hatch, on the other hand, claims that the DEA has all the enforcement powers it needs despite contrary statistics on the number of diversion actions taken by the diversion division of the DEA--oddly enough the DEA objected to the law at first but then inexplicably withdrew its objection--and the round condemnation of every other voice that has been raised since the televised report, and he adds that the contributions to his campaign fund from the pharmaceutical industry don't affect his opinion in the least.  But there is a larger implication here.  Set aside the venality of Congress as an institution and the possibility that impure motives on the parts of some may have entered into the passage of the law, the statute was aimed at a goal almost universally hailed by Republicans, and even some Democrats: deregulation.

You may remember the name Louie Gohmert, a Republican congressman from Texas.   About four years ago during the presidential primaries of 2012, he stood up in The House chamber and proclaimed that the EPA had promulgated a regulation that would sanction a farmer for the dust he kicked up when driving on a dirt road that led up to his house.  And then, Newt Gingrich repeated the claim during the period in which the Republican debates were occurring.  However, as it turns out there is no such regulation or anything even resembling such.  Gohmert is a joke everywhere but in Texas, but Gingrich is a leading light of the Republican Party, and hence a staunch advocate for deregulation...blind deregulation, it appears.  That same dogmatic, ill-considered bias against regulation was what led Congress as a whole to pass the law with little dissent.

While the substance of this scandal is of its own import, the larger issue is a scandal in its own right, but it remains to be seen whether the members of Congress in both houses will rethink anything that has systemic implications.  For one thing, its members act with a kind of deliberateness that could be confused for inertia...senators, who regard themselves as reserved and stolid rather than slow to learn and dilatory, in particular.  In fact in this instance, I assume that the only reason for the prompt action of our legislators is that most of them are going face the electorate in just over a year, including about 1/3 of The Senate.  In some circumstances, like this very public one, they experience a momentary revelation; they are the tail, not the dog.

So this is all an exhortation to you voters, America.  You have your chance to chasten those who interdict progress with dogmatism and partisan rigidity.  You have a year to tell your senators and representatives what you think...a year of heightened attention span.  So bark if you love social justice and prudence.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

Like everyone else, I have been trying to figure our the antidote for Donald Trump, just as I would  a disease if I were a scientist.  It's peculiar that neither in the his primary opponents' campaigns nor in Hillary Clinton's did anyone come up with any kind of effective ripost for his use of sobriquets like "little" Marco, "Lyin'" Ted or most prominently, "crooked" Hillary.  But even though the principals thought of some methods, like demanding details and sources for the things he said and the accusations he made,  nothing seemed to stick to him.  He claimed that Clinton was crooked, but he never made any cogent offer of proof that such was the case.  He claimed that Ted Cruz's father had played a role in the Kennedy assassination, but never came up with any evidence; it was just some "fake news" that he believed and helped to disperse, yet he branded Ted Cruz "lyin' Ted" without compunction, and more importantly without the lie he told about Cruz ever redounding to his detriment.  I've pondered how he got away with all that, and until now, I have never come up with a strategy of a sort comparable to the appellation assignment that Trump employed in order to win...and those nasty epithets played a major role in him doing so, as Trump himself might say, "believe me."  

But now I have recognized the obvious, and I can't believe that no one in a position from which to use it came up with it when it might have prevented the most dangerous electoral debacle, of my time at least, and it's such an ancient tactic.  We need to fight fire with fire.  To be specific, a senator on the Foreign Affairs committee in The Senate has been quite blunt about Trump, calling his aids adult supervision, in effect, and noting that Trump is bringing us to the brink of World War III.  So Trump has now branded Bob Corker, a senator who has committed to retiring without running for reelection in 2018, "liddle" Bob.  What Corker should do is issue a tweet that says, "I'd rather be liddle Bob than "Michelin Man Donald."  You see, the reason that these nicknames of Trump's stick is that they are apt.  Cruz did lie, and Marco Rubio is little.  As for Hillary Clinton, the investigation of her emails continued intermittently right up to days before the election.  Similarly, Bob Corker is 5'7", which I used to be until some time in my sixties, I guess--I'm 5'6" now--so the diminutive "liddle" is apt for both Corker and me.  But so is the pejoritive-in-tone "Michelin Man" as in Michelin Man Donald.  It's fire against fire...and because it's apt too, just like "liddle", "lyin'" or maybe even "crooked," every time even one of his supporters saw him in one of those burka-like suits of his, Michelin Man would come to mind.  All we need is for someone with a big twitter account to get Lester Holt to report the linkage of our elephantine president to the most famous tire avatar on televsion and billboards all over the world.  But we need Corker or someone of his stature to make the association of inner-tube like bloat with our president.

So, if you happen to be talking to Bob Corker, maybe you can make the suggestion that he make a strategic tweet.  And if you don't know Senator Corker, just tell everyone you know.  Maybe we can start a trend.  Have at you, Michelin Man.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

I don't have much to say today, but in light of the stunning events of early this week, I want to pose a question to you, America.  There is a bill pending before our congress to legalize silencers in the same way as "bump stocks"--the things that attach to semi-automatic rifles to make them automatic, 600-shot-per-minute machine guns--have been legalized, that is, if the bill passes people will be able to buy silencers on the internet too.  Here's the question.  How many people would have been killed in Las Vegas if the assassin of all those innocents...the assailant of all those injured people...had had a silencer on his gun and had started at the back of the crowd working his way forward as the music blared and the fans cheered?

Think about it and insist that your congressman and senator do too.

Your friend,