Rebutting The Big Lie–Again

America’s toddler-in-chief apparently remains consumed by his electoral loss in 2000. He continues to insist that the loss could not possibly have been legitimate–obviously, any loss or setback he experiences is clearly the result of nefarious doings on the part of his enemies. (Trump doesn’t have “opponents”–anyone who criticises or counters him is automatically an enemy to be demeaned and discredited.) Even when he wins, as–to America’s lasting shame–he did in 2024, he remains fixated on what appears to be a pathological need to erase past losses.

And so we are being treated to his continuing tantrum about the 2020 election, allied to an obvious efforts to prevent GOP losses in the upcoming midterms.

Normal people can be forgiven for finding this fixation tedious, and shrugging it off as additional evidence of Trump’s mental illness and increasing inability to conduct himself as an adult. Interestingly, however, election officials in several states have conducted studies focused on one of his most persist claims–that his loss was attributable to voting by hordes of “illegals”–and that massive voting by non-citizens continues to threaten free and fair elections.

The New York Times recently published an op-ed reporting on the results of those studies.

As the essay notes, charges that noncitizens are illegally casting ballots have become commonplace. On X, Elon Musk claims  that significant numbers of illegal immigrants vote. Rudy Giuliani charged that there were “probably about 250,000” votes from noncitizens in 2020 in Arizona–a state that requires proof of citizenship to vote. Unsurprisingly, there is no evidence to support those and similar allegations. Even the pro-Trump Heritage Foundation could come up with only 24 instances of noncitizens voting in U.S. elections in the ten-year span between 2003 and 2023.

More recently, several states have investigated these allegations of noncitizen voting by cross-checking their voter registration rolls with citizenship status. Their conclusion: non-citizen voting is virtually nonexistent.

Utah has approximately 2.1 million registered voters, among whom the study found one “confirmed noncitizen.”  “And that one noncitizen, while registered, had never voted.”

Idaho has one million voters. When the state ran a similar test in 2024, they uncovered 36 “very likely” registered noncitizens. Thirty-six!  As the secretary of state reported “out of the million-plus registered voters we started with, we’re down to 10 thousandths of one percent” of the overall count–assuming all of those registered actually voted. (Some elections are close, but hardly close enough to be affected by ten thousandths of a percent–even if one assumes that all 36 individuals voted and voted alike.)

Louisiana’s investigation in 2025 identified some 390 noncitizen registrants, “79 of whom had voted in at least one election over the last several decades (out of 2.9 million registrants).”  Montana found 23 “possible” noncitizen registrants out of the state’s 785,000 people registered to vote. And Georgia’s 2024 audit found 20 registered noncitizens out of the 8.2 million who were registered.

The Republican author of the essay writes that he spent four years overseeing voter registration in Maricopa County; in those four years, he had come across “a total of two possible instances of noncitizens voting out of some 2.5 million registered voters.”

Some politicians are trying to exploit even these small numbers. In Michigan, the Macomb County clerk, Anthony Forlini, who is running for the top election office in the state, the secretary of state, recently announced to great fanfare that he’d found 15 noncitizens on his county’s voter rolls of over 724,000 registered voters. The incumbent secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, then tasked her team with investigating the 15 files. It found that three of the people were U.S. citizens, four were previously removed from voter rolls, four were under further investigation and four do seem to be noncitizens.

Rather obviously, these constant accusations about noncitizen voting are an effort to score political points with low-information MAGA voters. But as the author notes, these allegations come at a real cost–they erode Americans’ confidence in the integrity of elections and they are an insult to the hard-working public servants who routinely oversee and guarantee our free and fair elections.

But as he also notes, and as so many of us fear, these accusations aren’t just “part of the broader story he’s concocted to avoid accepting that he lost to Joe Biden in 2020.”  They are also a threat to this fall’s midterm elections.

That threat isn’t a miniscule number of votes cast by non-citizens. The danger comes from the craven Republican politicians bending their knees to our mad would-be King–and thereby facilitating his corrupt and fraudulent efforts to cling to power.

Good government folks are preparing to protect the midterms, but a truly massive turnout–a huge Blue Wave–is the only sure-fire way to stymie these efforts.

Comments

Indiana’s Incompetent Government

Apologies to readers who have the good fortune to reside elsewhere, but this post returns to the fiscal, civic and cultural disaster that is Indiana government.

I have repeatedly focused on our deplorable legislature, dominated as it is by “Christian” culture warriors who–at least according to my clerical friends– are anything but Christian. As I have repeatedly argued, many of them owe their positions to Indiana’s longstanding and extreme gerrymandering, and the evident inability of Hoosier Democrats to run candidates in districts supposedly “safe” for Republicans. (I think this is what pundits call giving up in advance…)

It would be unfair to focus solely on the legislature and ignore Indiana voters’ persistent elevation of manifestly unfit individuals to statewide positions of authority. The election of these men (and currently, they are all men) theoretically cannot be attributed to gerrymandering, since they run statewide–although I would argue that the state’s longstanding gerrymandering has successfully suppressed the Democratic vote. (Indiana has the second-worst turnout in the country.) As a result, over the years, more progressive voters simply haven’t shown up, allowing candidates who are (at best) mediocre to prevail, often against far more thoughtful and qualified Democrats.

As a result, sentient Hoosiers are embarrassed by out-and-proud Christian Nationalists like U.S. Senator Jim Banks, and infuriated by our other Senator, Todd Young, who clearly knows better, but routinely earns the gold medal in the “spineless and feckless” category.

According to recent polling, even Republican Hoosiers are experiencing buyers’ remorse over the 2024 victories of our Governor and Lieutenant Governor. Governor Braun’s approval ratings cluster in the high twenties, while the highest approval I’ve seen for Micah Beckwith–our embarrassing Christian nationalist Lieutenant Governor–was nine percent (other polls have shown him at seven.)

Then there’s the buffoon serving as Secretary of State.

Few Hoosiers even know who occupies the office of Indiana Secretary of State, but the intrepid Indiana voters who would vote for a turnip if had an R by its name have installed Diego Morales in that role. (He won despite the fact that he’d previously been fired from a staff position in that office for incompetence. But hey–he was better than a turnip…)

Since assuming office, Morales has generated sporadic news coverage for using taxpayer monies to travel, employ relatives and purchase a very expensive SUV–but none of those activities generated the chaos that has most recently ensued as a result of the office’s incompetence.

As the Indiana Capital Chronicle (among others) has reported,

Political candidates from around Indiana have been redoing paperwork for this spring’s primary ballot as confusion surrounds whether the secretary of state’s office properly processed those forms.

The turmoil stems from questions over whether staffers to Republican Secretary of State Diego Morales were correctly certified to accept sworn statements from candidates that they meet the legal requirements for the office they are seeking.

Morales maintains that his office followed state law, but that hasn’t stopped many Republican and Democratic candidates from refiling the two-page document this week at the Indiana Election Division office ahead of Friday’s deadline.

The trouble with the Secretary of State’s certification was first reported by political commentator and lawyer, Abdul-Hakim Shabazz. Candidates are refiling in order to avoid a situation in which a political opponent could assert that their candidacy hadn’t been processed correctly. While that wouldn’t automatically disqualify them, it would constitute an unwelcome issue.

Morales evidently appointed nine staff members as “special deputies,” giving them authority to authenticate candidacy forms during the filing period. “Those documents, however, include no official time stamp showing when they were filed by the office.” Evidently, that omission means there’s no way of confirming that those individuals were “special deputies” at the time they certified the declarations of candidacy.

Both Republican and Democratic officials are counseling their candidates to refile. The executive director of the Indiana House Democratic campaign arm advised all candidates to resubmit their forms if they originally did so at the secretary of state’s office, saying she was concerned that Morales’ office had “screwed this up before” by not properly filing its authorization paperwork, and that consequently, she didn’t trust them now.

So here we are in the Hoosier state. We have a legislature filled with culture warriors intent upon taking us back to the 1950s (or before), and state officials who range from self-identified Christian nationalists, to incompetents, to feckless, to those who are just “out of touch.”

And then we wonder why we have a brain drain. 

Comments

It Isn’t Just Trump…

It’s impossible–at least for thinking people–to live in today’s America without trying to figure out just how we got here.

Most of us start with the obvious question: how could some seventy-seven million people vote for a thoroughly despicable felon who was also a crude, bloviating, intellectually-challenged narcissist? (And yes, I’m afraid one answer to that is that he was a White male despicable felon, and therefore preferable to an accomplished, sane Black female.) But getting hung up over that question ignores another that should be equally obvious, the one with which I began this post: how did we get here? What social and political dislocations and structural problems enabled the election of this profoundly unfit individual, and what explains the millions who continue to support him?

In a recent essay for Axios, Jim Venderhel and Mike Allen offer one perspective on that question. They focus on what they identify as “three once-in-a-lifetime shifts”–the ideologies, tactics and tone of governance; the lightning-fast advancements in AI; and the rapid transformation of how our realities are shaped. They argue that all three are hitting us at once, and that  focusing only on Trump misses “the enormity of change pushing our minds and nation somewhere new, different and uncertain.”

They don’t discount the enormous damage Trump has done. As the authors concede, Trump has turned Republicans into an America First fascist movement while stretching presidential powers far beyond their constitutional limits. He has re-shaped both parties–what they stand for and who votes for them, and he has destroyed previous global respect for the United States.

When they write that “whatever politics was before, it won’t be again” it’s hard to disagree.

The essay also references the changes in American society being wrought by AI–changes that are also part of the transformation that I consider most significant and most troubling: the technological advances that have increasingly sorted us into residents of dramatically different realities.

As the authors write,

As a society, we’re breaking into hundreds or thousands of information bubbles, shaped and hardened based on our age, politics, jobs and interests.

Pick six random people (we’ve both done this at dinners). You’ll often find that most get their information from platforms the others never visit, and trust people the others have never heard of. This is a brave new world.

The common window we once collectively looked through has splintered into countless pieces. This change is accelerating with the decline of broadcast TV and cable news, traditional print and digital media, and local news.
In its place: soaring podcasters, YouTubers, Substackers, and digital and encrypted communities. With attention scattered and trust shattered, we’ve grown highly susceptible to manipulation, polarization and persistent frustration.

One of my sons is a “techie,” and in the age of AI, he now distrusts virtually every “news item” he sees online until he checks it out. That includes the “deep fakes” that perfectly mimic genuine photographs.

Whether you agree or disagree with the authors of the Axios essay on the importance of these three shifts in our social environment–or the implied suggestion that they represent something new under the sun–I think it’s impossible to discount their combined effect. (The essay unhelpfully concludes with a hope that “thoughtful people” will spend more time thinking thoughtfully. I didn’t expect them to offer solutions, but failing even to suggest at least some ameliorative actions seemed like a cop-out.)

In a very real way, the three shifts identified in the essay are really just different aspects of a single, enormously consequential change in human society: the ability to curate our preferred realities. Americans no longer have a common understanding of our physical or social environment. The ability to choose our “news”–to seek out “authorities” who will confirm our biases, to “cherry pick” from an infinite supply of facts, half-facts and outright propaganda–enable Trump and his administration to lie repeatedly, knowing that a substantial portion of the population will willingly accept and parrot the disinformation.

One answer to my original question–how could people vote for someone so obviously repulsive and unfit–is that far too many residents of those curated realities were simply unaware of Trump’s unfitness. Voters who limited their information sources to Fox News and its clones didn’t live in the same world the rest of us occupied.

I am increasingly convinced that the most pressing issue we will face if and when we rid ourselves of the MAGA pestilence will be how to reconstruct a common, factual reality. There cannot be functioning communities–local, national or global– without it.

Comments

Brooks’ Final Column

David Brooks has announced that he is leaving The New York Times, for an as-yet unexplained position involving Yale University.

Most days when the Times publishes a Brooks article, I read it–often with appreciation, other times shaking my head at what comes across as a self-satisfied imperviousness to contrary understandings. (His warnings against elitism display a lack of self-awareness–in my view, Brooks is the epitome of an elitist.)

That said, most of this “goodby” article belongs in the perceptive category. I entirely agree with this paragraph:

In reality, I’ve long believed that there is a weird market failure in American culture. There are a lot of shows on politics, business and technology, but there are not enough on the fundamental questions of life that get addressed as part of a great liberal arts education: How do you become a better person? How do you find meaning in retirement? Does America still have a unifying national narrative? How do great nations recover from tyranny?

Brooks steps back and takes a long view of what can only be described as American decline: the loss of faith in democracy, in America’s goodness, in technology and especially in our fellow Americans. As he points out,  Barack Obama could run a presidential campaign on hope as recently as 2008, but other trends have erased that hopefulness.

The Iraq war shattered America’s confidence in its own power. The financial crisis shattered Americans’ faith that capitalism when left alone would produce broad and stable prosperity. The internet did not usher in an era of deep connection but rather an era of growing depression, enmity and loneliness. Collapsing levels of social trust revealed a comprehensive loss of faith in our neighbors. The rise of China and everything about Donald Trump shattered our serene assumptions about America’s role in the world.

He lists evidence that America is a “sadder, meaner and more pessimistic country” these days. Public discourse is distressingly negative. Majorities believe the country is in decline. Americans distrust experts and so-called elites. “Only 13 percent of young adults believe America is heading in the right direction. Sixty-nine percent of Americans say they do not believe in the American dream.”

Brooks sees nihilism everywhere, especially in Donald Trump, and–like so many of us–finds it incredible and immensely disheartening that In the election of 2024, “77 million American voters looked at Trump and saw nothing morally disqualifying about the man.” Then he makes a point I have frequently made. It isn’t just Trump.

It’s tempting to say that Trump corrupted America. But the shredding of values from the top was preceded by a decades-long collapse of values from within. Four decades of hyper-individualism expanded individual choice but weakened the bonds between people. Multiple generations of students and their parents fled from the humanities and the liberal arts, driven by the belief that the prime purpose of education is to learn how to make money.

Brooks returns to one of his favorite themes–that Americans occupy a “naked public square,” that we lack a shared moral order. He bemoans what he calls the “privatization of morality,” and says the lack of shared standards makes social cohesion impossible. There is both truth and danger in that assertion. A shared morality/philosophy is important–but so is the content of those shared commitments.

After all, White Christian nationalists agree with Brooks–and are intent upon dictating the contents of that “shared morality.”

I strongly believe that a shared allegiance to the principles of America’s founding documents–the importance of individual liberty, civic equality and the rule of law, rather than a shared theology or the “spiritual climate” Brooks recommends–provide a sufficient basis upon which Americans can and should clothe that naked public square.

I do agree with Brooks’ assertion that a “true humanism” that upholds the dignity of each person is the antidote to nihilism. True humanism, as he says, “comes in many flavors”– secular, Christian, Jewish and so on. He defines it as “any endeavor that deepens our understanding of the human heart, any gesture that makes other people feel seen, heard and respected.”

Finally, Brooks recommends that readers engage in what he calls the “Great Conversation” over theology, philosophy, psychology, history, literature, music, the study of global civilizations and the arts. What he doesn’t seem to recognize is that he’s preaching to a relatively small choir. (A criticism that admittedly could be leveled at this blog.) One of the thorniest issues we face is how to engage all or most of our fellow Americans in a common conversation–how we bridge the distances between the bubbles we inhabit.

The essay is quintessential Brooks. He’ll be missed.

Comments

Yellow Lines And Dead Armadillos

Well-meaning people continue to urge folks on the political Left and Right to talk to each other, to listen to each other, and to come to the “middle.” This constant refrain drives me up the wall, because what I see are not “politics as usual” disputes, but a fundamental moral divide. The only “policy” being debated is the right of a lawless administration to send ICE goons (aka Trump’s Gestapo) into American cities to kidnap and brutalize citizens at will.

Even the terms “Left” and “Right” are inappropriate. The Republican Party once had a coherent, politically conservative agenda–free trade, limited government, respect for law and order, support for NATO… That party has vanished, substituting  virulent racism and devotion to Trump for anything resembling a conservative philosophy–or any philosophy, for that matter.

The morphing of the Republican Party into an alternate reality cult has also remade the Democratic Party (most of which was never as “Left” as Republicans used to charge). Actual conservatives and moderates have departed the GOP in droves. Many–probably most–now count themselves Independent, but a not-insignificant number now identify as Democrats, turning Democrats into a nearly ungovernable ideological mix.

The GOP has become a neo-fascist cult; Democratic voters are those who oppose that cult.

When I read pious exhortations about “coming together” and “listening to each other” I want to scream that I have been listening– I’ve heard MAGA loud and clear, and I know there is no “middle ground.”

A recent, welcome essay in Lincoln Square made that point forcefully. As Stuart Stevens began,

In this time of national trauma, we hear many calls for an end to the divisions that are shredding the national fabric. It all sounds lovely. Who could argue that Americans need to do more to understand each other and reach a consensus?

Well, I could.

I don’t want to understand the guy in the Camp Auschwitz sweatshirt during the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol.

I don’t want to understand the Death Squad ICE agents who murder innocent citizens.

I don’t want to understand the twisted hatred of Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem.

I don’t want to understand the MAGA followers who say the 2020 election was stolen.

Stevens–one of the sane Americans who fled the GOP–draws a stark line between those who he says are “defending the legacy of the Greatest Generation and those who defile its sacrifice.” He points out that carrying the same country’s passport  is an accident of birth, while values are a choice.

Too many Democrats still believe Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election when she said, “You could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables.” I don’t know how to break it to you guys, but that’s the sort of self-flagellating instinct that helped my Republican candidates win races they had no business winning.

The problem wasn’t that Hillary Clinton described MAGA as deplorable. The problem was that she stopped doing it. You win races by defining the other side in sweeping negative language. Races are about differences and choices. There’s nothing in the middle of the road but yellow lines and dead armadillos.

Stevens underlines that observation with a very simple question: Is this who you are?” He invokes the image of a ranting Stephen Miller “looking like he’s auditioning for Joseph Goebbels role as Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda” and suggests asking a normal American, a sane voter, “Is this who you want to be?”

We are taught that it is a positive character attribute to give another person the benefit of the doubt. That may work when debating converting the U.S. to the metric system, but it’s a Munich Accord-level of appeasement when dealing with the lunatics of MAGA. Those of us who view this moment as an existential threat to democracy should reject any assumption that the other side is acting in good faith. When a home invader has broken in your door, don’t act like he thinks he’s visiting a friend and has the wrong address. Do whatever it takes to get the bastard out of your house.

Legacy media “both-siding” to the contrary, Americans are not engaged in the sort of normal political debate that demands compromise and conciliation. MAGA folks understand that, while far too many of the rest of us don’t. We are facing a sustained, intentional assault on the very foundations of America’s identity.

That assault calls for resistance, not conciliation. There is no “middle ground” between liberal democracy and fascism.

Comments