Ending a tough year on a note of hope

I am very grateful to have completed this astonishingly chaotic year with the good health of me and my beloved Susan, still happily employed, and living in an America that voted decisively to reclaim the Soul of America by rejecting the toxic destruction of the outgoing president and welcoming the new Biden - Harris administration.

Tragically, lack of Federal leadership has turned America into the world’s most incompetent advanced nation in its handling of COVID-19. I expect strong Federal leadership from Biden based upon science and compassion. And although there are terrible times ahead, I expect we can emerge from this pandemic nightmare.  

Women expressed themselves at the ballot box and helped dethrone the obsolete and putrid hypermasculine attempt at domination by force and fear of the outgoing president and his cult.  Biden’s elevation of women in his administration is more than welcome and overdue.  I hope and trust that the powers of collaboration and caring will prevail over the powers of domination and threat.

Black Lives Matter demonstrations scared the old white folk who tried their best to reframe them as violent uprisings but actually showed the rest of us what life is still like in a still racist country.  I expect the new administration to embrace the blessings of diversity which has long been the bedrock of strength of this country.

Abuse of immigrants during Trump’s reign of terror will not be sanctioned by the new administration, and I really hope that sensible immigration policy can be worked out, starting with the naturalization of the Dreamers.

Hope springs anew at this time each year, and we have reason to be hopeful since the country rejected the fascist, oligarchical potential of a Trump future.  I look forward to the growing of a Biden democracy and the shrinking of Trump and the Trump cult.

Happy New Year!

 

He knows what he is guilty of

Preet Bhahara, former SDNY District Attorney, said about four years ago that a prosecutor has a good idea of the crimes he is investigating, but the criminal knows exactly what crimes he has committed. Trump knows what they are going to find. And his desperation to stay in office is becoming more extreme, more desperate, and more ridiculous.  

His level of desperation is actually a kind of confession. 

I suppose he was so deluded by his astonishingly grandiose ego that he thought he would stay on as el presidente for a decade or so and die in office, immune from prosecution based upon his ability to terrorize any opposition.  But he lost. 

And he will be gone, and I think he will so disgrace himself on the way out that he will seriously erode his grip on his cult. He is becoming more and more pathetic the more desperate he becomes - not exactly the awe inspiring titan he tries to project himself to be.

Or so I pray. 

Without trust nothing is possible

George Schultz, former Secretary of State and many other Federal roles, just wrote a letter at the age of 100.  He said a very important thing that explains just about everything you need to know about government, and life itself:

“Trust is the coin of the realm.”

“When trust was in the room, whatever room that was — the family room, the schoolroom, the locker room, the office room, the government room or the military room — good things happened,” Shultz wrote. “When trust was not in the room, good things did not happen. Everything else is details."

This explains the politics of today. Democrats have thousands of reasons not to trust Trump, and his Republican Party - from trying overturn the will of the people in the Presidential election, to putting out over 25,000 lies while in office, to literally trying to increase the number of COVID-19 infections to create "herd immunity", to refusing to lead and coordinate a national response to the COVID-19 pandemic, to openly courting racists and white supremacists, to betraying American allies while pandering to Putin and other authoritarians around the world.  Democratic distrust of Republicans who knew better but afraid to stand up to him, and worse yet, distrust of Republicans who agreed with him, has been well earned.

And Republicans seem to be lost in a reality distortion field of right wing media paranoia so they literally do not know the actual news, but only believe ridiculous and endless stories that play to their grievances and paranoia, so they don't trust the news, don't trust the Democrats, and don't trust the truth.

This is the result of the handiwork of America's enemies, led by Putin's Russia. Russia's poisoning of the information that spreads through America is having the effect that he desires - we don't trust each other, and without trust nothing is possible.

Failed threats

Although the "Proud Boys" tried to terrorize Washington DC, and although they managed to stab four people and burn Black Lives Matter banners, and although many of the states that hosted the votes of the Electoral College yesterday had to do so under heavy security, and although the loser in the White House continues to deny the reality of his loss of the election --- the Electoral College submitted their votes honestly yesterday as each state voted, and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have officially been declared winner of the 2020 presidential race - 306 to 232.

I am grateful that the Electoral College courageously did its duty.  And I am saddened that the Trumpster cult thought they could overturn the will of the people. 

Violence is the number one strategy of fascists

Trump lost the election but he is goading his Trumpster Cult into violence.  Fascists dominate by violence. Trump believes in domination. Trump believes in violence. There is a terrible chance that people will be killed on behalf of this psychotically cruel person. 

Monday Trump officially loses when the Electoral College elects Biden. I send all of my prayers and psychic energies to a peaceful day. I hope I am overly fearful. 

Can one lie destroy a country?

 

 Can one lie destroy a country?  Yes.  One did a hundred years ago.  Germany lost WWI on the battlefield, but the generals in charge made up a myth to exonerate themselves - they lied - they created the myth that Germany lost because it was stabbed in the back -  the Dolchstosslegende, or stab-in-the-back myth.

Jochen Bittner writes:

Military officers, monarchists and right-wingers spread the myth that if it had not been for political sabotage by Social Democrats and Jews back home, the army would never have had to give in....In the face of humiliation and unable or unwilling to cope with the truth, many Germans embarked on a disastrous self-delusion: The nation had been betrayed, but its honor and greatness could never be lost....It was also at the heart of Nazi propaganda, and instrumental in justifying violence against opponents. The key to Hitler’s success was that, by 1933, a considerable part of the German electorate had put the ideas embodied in the myth — honor, greatness, national pride — above democracy."

And today in America we have a president, and his avid cult, creating another lie to cover up for a humiliating loss.  They claim that Trump actually won the 2020 election and only lost it because of massive voter fraud by Biden.  This is a total, one hundred percent, obvious lie.  Republican governors of close race states have certified the accuracy of the votes in their states - Georgia for example.  They are not Biden supporters, they are avid Trumpsters, and even they have to admit the truth that Donald Trump simply lost an election.  

Every two years half of the people who run for office lose.  Just like Trump.  But Trump is some combination of insane and malicious. He refuses to accept reality.  And some of his cult doesn't understand that he is lying. Some people actually believe the election was stolen.

And, like Germany in the 1930s, the Trump cultists can take that false myth, that the Trump and they were cheated, and use it to justify anything, certainly to justify cheating in future elections, certainly to do violence to those who oppose them, certainly to establish a right wing tyranny by any means possible.

I hope and pray that most on the right are just humoring the pathetic failure in the White House, and that we don't follow Germany's 1930s footsteps. But if we don't do so it won't be from any lack of effort by the loser in the White House to make excuses for his loss and make himself into a future American despot.