Author Archives: Sheila

Memorial Day

Monday was Memorial Day. In my city of Indianapolis, Memorial Day concludes a “big deal” weekend that features the City’s famous 500 Mile Race and numerous attendant festivities. The original meaning of the holiday tends to get buried in the weekend’s hustle and bustle, as thousands of visitors descend on the city to drink, eat and watch the race.

I hope that–in the midst of the festivities–at least some of us stop to remember that Memorial Day is intended to honor those who have lost their lives serving in the U.S. Military.

In The Contrarian, Jennifer Rubin recently issued that reminder. Memorial Day was intended to “memorialize” the sacrifices of the American soldiers who fought to preserve democracy around the globe. Writing from Spain, where she is traveling, she noted that but for America’s military and financial sacrifices, the world we inhabit today would look very different. If not for the young men and women who were ready to lay down their lives for others, Europe today would not be free.

It’s an appropriate time, as Donald Trump and his MAGA know-nothings throw aside American values (e.g., empathy, selflessness, ingenuity, inclusion), to appreciate the sacrifice of all those who have served. In the midst of debates about Medicaid cuts, debt, and tax cuts for billionaires, we should not lose track of honoring our veterans, whom Trump has nonchalantly kicked to the curb…

While he cuts billions from the Veterans Affairs Department and lays off tens of thousands of vets, Trump wants to throw away tens of millions on a cringeworthy military parade on his birthday, which also happens to be the US Army’s 250th birthday and Flag Day. Rather than honor others’ service by keeping our commitments, he preens amid military pomp like every two-bit dictator on the planet.

Trump cares not one wit about those who, unlike him, risked their lives. Quite the opposite: he has made life notably challenging for vets. Thanks to some masterful Washington Post reporting on the trauma he intentionally inflicted on tens of thousands of government workers, we have learned about the inexcusable toll on veterans in particular, who disproportionately serve in the federal government. Sadly, “Phone operators for the Veterans Crisis Line said they’d seen a rise in calls from federal employees and others worried about cuts to the VA.”

Given that Trump considers those who serve to be “losers and suckers,” it’s hardly surprising that concern for veterans is nowhere on his “to do” list. And the damage isn’t limited to the reckless and illegal DOGE cuts. As Rubin notes, almost every part of the horrific MAGA budget will hit vets especially hard. From the federal personnel firings (vets make up 30% of the federal workforce) to the draconian cuts to Medicaid and VA spending, to the layoffs at the Department of Veterans Affairs, to the petty purge of the Pentagon archives that documented diversity in the military, veterans have been disproportionate targets of Trump’s cruelest actions. 

That cruelty has prompted the emergence of veterans’ organizations challenging the administration and the MAGA Republicans who are complicit–even enthusiastic–in the Trumpian assault. Vote Vets has proved to be a particularly effective voice for the nation’s veterans, but there are many others.

One wonders how those lawmakers who actually served–Senator Todd Young comes to mind–rationalize their support for the constant assault on veterans’ well-being. During the Memorial Day recess (ending June 2), constituents should ask them.

As Rubin concludes,

Veterans and their families have remained undaunted in military service and in the face of grotesque betrayal by the MAGA ingrates. They deserve better than this president, his cronies, and MAGA flunkies have offered. During their Memorial Day recess, Republican lawmakers who have enabled Trump’s cruelty should take a moment to reflect on what it truly means to put country above self.

Unfortunately, putting country above self is a concept absolutely foreign to MAGA and to the racist madman who occupies–and routinely desecrates–the Oval Office.

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Why It Matters

A recent newsletter from Charlie Sykes really resonated with me. Sykes began by exploring why he focused on political reporting–why he didn’t turn his face from the disastrous dismantling of the American Idea to more pleasant concerns. Why is he reporting on Trump and his merry band of morons and psychopaths, rather than listening to music, or learning a new language, or spending more time with his grandchildren?

As he wrote,

I’m at the age now when every twinge or ache makes me think: is this the thing that’s going to kill me? So why am I devoting so much of my time to writing about the stupid, the inane, and the futile? How many years do I have to squander on Donald F’ing Trump?

I really related to that question. Like Sykes, I’m at a “certain age.” And I am one of the very fortunate–I still really, really like my spouse of 45 years; my children (who have evidently overlooked my deficits as a parent while they were growing up) are attentive and caring; my grandchildren are perfect (okay, maybe I’m a bit over-fond…); our blended family is loving and compatible, and–at least until Trump destroys the robust economy he inherited from the Biden administration–we have enough money in our retirement funds to live comfortably. I should be happy all the time.

Instead–as regular readers undoubtedly recognize–I’m routinely livid. Like Sykes, I sometimes wonder why I allow the country’s fraught political situation to displace the good fortune for which I should be grateful, so I was interested in his conclusion, which rested on an essay by former political pundit Charles Krauthammer.

A man of Renaissance sensibilities, Krauthammer could have written about literally anything, but he chose to write about politics, because he knew that was the one thing we had to get right.

“In the end,” he wrote, “all the beautiful, elegant things in life, the things that I care about, the things that matter, depend on getting the politics right. Because in those societies where they get it wrong, everything else is destroyed, everything else is leveled.” Krauthammer was echoing John Adams who wrote: “I must study politics and war, so that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.”

But Krauthammer had the added benefit of our own grim history.

“You can have the most advanced and efflorescent cultures,” he wrote. “Get your politics wrong, however, and everything stands to be swept away. This is not ancient history. This is Germany 1933.”

Sykes quotes Krauthammer for his observations about the extreme importance of governance and politics, pointing to examples like North Korea, “whose deranged Stalinist politics has created a land of stunning desolation and ugliness, both spiritual and material,” and to China’s Cultural Revolution, which he labeled a “sustained act of national self-immolation” that aimed “to destroy five millennia of Chinese culture.”

“The entire 20th Century with its mass political enthusiasms is a lesson in the supreme power of politics to produce ever-expanding circles of ruin. World War One not only killed more people than any previous war. The psychological shock of Europe’s senseless self inflicted devastation forever changed western sensibilities, practically overthrowing the classical arts, virtues, and modes of thought. The Russian Revolution and its imitators (Chinese, Cuban, Vietnamese, Cambodian) tried to atomize society so thoroughly — to war against the mediating structures that stand between the individual and the state — that the most basic bonds of family, faith, fellowship and conscience came to near dissolution.

“Of course, the greatest demonstration of the finality of politics is the Holocaust, which in less than a decade destroyed a millennium-old civilization, sweeping away not only 6 million souls but the institutions, the culture, the very tongue of the now vanished world of European Jewry.”

I think it was Santayana who said “Those who don’t learn history are doomed to repeat it.”

Those of us who did learn history–or at least a great deal of it–can choose to do one of two things. Those of us who have the option can burrow back into our comfortable lives and ignore the current fascist takeover, or we can join together with others who are determined to fight the malignant forces that threaten all of us, but especially those whose lives are more precarious.

When you think about it, unless you are a very self-engrossed person, it isn’t much of a choice.

I’ve been working with Central Indiana Indivisible. I hope those of you in the area will join me. If you can’t attend protests and participate in other resistance activities–and even if you can– you can support them financially here.

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The Real Christians

I grew up in Anderson, Indiana, in one of a handful of Jewish families then living in that small town.  Anti-Semitic incidents were not infrequent, and when they occurred, my mother would reassure me that “a real Christian is a Jew’s best friend.” It was just too bad that there were so many faux Christians around…

In that sense, not much has changed.

Given the persistent hypocrisy and bigotry being exhibited by the Christian Nationalists who are constantly parading their faux piety, it is tempting to simply write off all people who self- identify as Christian. But that would be a mistake, because there are many Christians who take the actual words of the biblical Jesus seriously. I was reminded of their existence when I read that the Episcopal Church had refused to resettle the White Afrikaners who–alone among would-be immigrants–had been welcomed by our racist President and granted a facilitated refugee status.

According to the Religion News Service,

In a striking move that ends a nearly four-decades-old relationship between the federal government and the Episcopal Church, the denomination announced on Monday (May 12) that it is terminating its partnership with the government to resettle refugees, citing moral opposition to resettling white Afrikaners from South Africa who have been classified as refugees by President Donald Trump’s administration.

In a follow-up article, the News Service quoted an Episcopal bishop who characterized assisting with the settlement of the Afrikaners “a Faustian bargain.”

The head of Church World Service–one of several religious resettlement groups currently suing the Trump administration– was quoted as saying “We are concerned that the U.S. Government has chosen to fast-track the admission of Afrikaners, while actively fighting court orders to provide life-saving resettlement to other refugee populations who are in desperate need of resettlement.” 

By resettling this population, the Government is demonstrating that it still has the capacity to quickly screen, process, and depart refugees to the United States. It’s time for the Administration to honor our nation’s commitment to the thousands of refugee families it abandoned with its cruel and illegal executive order.

On his very first day in office, Trump suspended the U.S. refugee settlement program, stranding more than 100,000 people previously approved for resettlement. These were people who had fled war and persecution in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo and Afghanistan. Most such refugees are nonwhite, coming from what Trump has delicately described as “shithole countries.”

The speed with which the Trump administration facilitated the immigration of Whites, while refusing to consider refugee status for people of color with far more compelling evidence, was stark and obvious confirmation of this administration’s deep-seated racism. 

Not that we needed added evidence. Trump’s war against “woke” and DEI–diversity, equity and inclusion–is an obvious expression of the White “Christian” Nationalism that motivates his supporters. (The lengths to which Trumpers will go to eliminate any concern for equal treatment has led to some ridiculous results: in its zeal to redefine any effort to promote “equity” as an assault on White folks, the administration has suspended a digital equity program established to bring the Internet to underserved rural areas populated by Trump supporters. Evidently, broadband equity is racist.)

Support for my mother’s thesis that “good Christians” are neither racist nor anti-Semitic is emerging. One example is Christians Against Christian Nationalism, an organization that labels Christian Nationalism a “threat to both our religious communities and our democracy.”

Christian nationalism seeks to merge Christian and American identities, distorting both the Christian faith and America’s constitutional democracy. Christian nationalism demands Christianity be privileged by the State and implies that to be a good American, one must be Christian. It often overlaps with and provides cover for white supremacy and racial subjugation. We reject this damaging political ideology and invite our fellow Christians to join us in opposing this threat to our faith and to our nation.

I encourage you to visit their website, which–among other things– recognizes the overlap between Christian Nationalism’s faux Christianity and its profound and anti-American racism. 

American society has come a long way since my 1950s childhood in small-town Indiana. Trump and his supporters are frantic to reverse the substantial gains made by women and minorities in American culture; the effort by Christian Nationalists to label progress toward equity and inclusion as anti-White, anti-Christian discrimination is an effort to do just that.

It’s comforting to know that real Christians will oppose them.

 
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Borowitz Shames Legacy Media

Sometimes it takes comedy to cut through the fog and propaganda. Back in the day, my husband and I were devoted watchers of The Daily Show–a time when Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert skillfully skewered the pompous and self-important. (Admittedly, these days, we look at those we thought of as the “bad guys” with something approaching fondness. Compared to Trump and his collection of nutcases and incompetents, they look positively cuddly…)

Recently, the satirical Borowitz Report took on the legacy media’s obsession with President Biden’s decline while in office–an obsession fed by a book accusing his staff of “hiding” the effects of aging. His take was perfect.

In a bombshell report that stirred controversy on Tuesday, a prominent conspiracy theorist claimed that Joe Biden concealed his health problems by making the American economy boom for four straight years.

“Biden thought he could hide his health issues by making the U.S. economy the envy of the world,” the conspiracist, Harland Dorrinson, said. “Low unemployment, a surging stock market, and a stable dollar all played their parts in the cover-up.”

Strengthening NATO and bolstering relationships with allies were also key components of Biden’s elaborate scheme to hide his health woes, Dorrinson said.

“Biden kept the media distracted by making the US trusted and respected around the world,” he said. “Trump would never do that.”

The Biden presidency wasn’t perfect, but it was transformational, repairing the international damage done during Trump’s first term and growing the economy “from the middle out” as he liked to say. Perhaps, as he faded, some of those advances were managed by the highly competent people around him, but they were real. The government worked. Rather than focusing on the substantial progress being made, however, the legacy media jumped on every gaffe, every stumble. 

That disproportionate attention to the ravages of age would have been less offensive had the same degree of attention been paid to Trump’s far more obvious mental illness and decline. But the same media that criticised Biden unmercifully has continually sane-washed Trump.

I agree with Robert Hubbell, who finds the differences in coverage maddening and incomprehensible. Noting the recent “tell-all” book by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson claiming that Biden’s advisors “covered up” his “decline,” he wrote:

Let’s put aside for a moment that several of the key figures who allegedly witnessed events described in the book have said publicly, “Not true. It didn’t happen.”

Let’s put aside for a moment that Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson were writing a book about an alleged “cover up” when they were actively reporting on Joe Biden’s presidency, but never mentioned the “cover up” that they were allegedly discovering through 200 interviews.

Let’s put aside the implausability of the notion that one could “cover up” the cognitive state of a man who was appearing daily at campaign events, delivering addresses to Congress where he outwitted the entire Republican caucus, providing interviews to major media outlets, and guiding America through a period of stable foreign relations and successful domestic policy.

If it was a “cover-up,” it didn’t prevent major media outlets from reporting daily on Joe Biden’s age, stutter, stiff gait, and alleged gaffes.

Hubbell does agree that there was a coverup.

Donald Trump was, and is, cognitively impaired. And that fact is being covered up by the media every single day.

We all know it. The press knows it. His advisors know it. But the media gives a fraction of the coverage to Trump’s much more serious manifestations of cognitive decline than to the anonymous reporting in Jake Tapper’s sensationalized book.

Hubbell is absolutely correct when he says that the coverage media is giving today to claims about a former president who guided our nation through one of the most successful presidencies in the modern era is shameful when compared to the normalizing coverage of an “obviously cognitively impaired president who is violating the Constitution on a daily basis and running an administration that seems to be an open cesspool of graft.”

As Norman Orenstein observed, “I have a hard time watching journalists high five each other over books on WH covering up for Biden. A diversion from their own deep culpability in Trump’s election. False equivalence, normalizing the abnormal, treating Trump as no real danger were the norm, not the exception.” 

Hubbell is entirely correct when he accuses the legacy media of failing America–of failing to provide appropriate coverage of the threat posed by Trump. “And they keep doing it. To their everlasting shame.”

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The “Naughty” List

Santa Claus isn’t the only one who is keeping a list of “who is naughty and who is nice.” Charlie Sykes recently brought some limited order out of the chaos of Trump’s first months–a real service, since most of us have been beaten down by the daily firehose of assaults on decency, the Constitution and the rule of law–the tactic Steve Bannon has called “flooding the zone with shit.”

Sykes assembled his list in order to criticize Chuck Schumer, who has finally graduated from sending “stern letters” and moved to block Trump appointees. Sykes asks “What took you so long? Why didn’t you act when”…and then he provides his list of Trumpian assaults that should have prompted active blowback when they occurred.

Granted, Sykes’ list isn’t comprehensive, so intensely has the zone been flooded, but here are the acts that he says should have triggered action from Schumer when they occurred:

  •  blanket pardons for Jan. 6 rioters, including those who assaulted police officers.
  • his purge of the FBI, targeting agents who had investigated his own misconduct.
  • suspending enforcement of the foreign bribery ban.
  • calling for the impeachment of a federal judge who ruled against him.
  • firing the head of the Office of Special Counsel who protects whistleblowers.
  • firing the head of the Office of Government Ethics.
  • firing the prosecutors who worked on Capitol riot investigations.
  • slashing the office that prosecutes misconduct by public officials.
  • dropping charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams in return for Adams agreement to work with ICE — a move that led to the resignation of the acting SDNY U.S. attorney and several other federal prosecutors.
  • Trump’s refusal to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the U.S. — stating that he could, but wasn’t going to.
  • Trump’s suggestion to the president of El Salvador that he would send “homegrown” criminals — American citizens — to his notorious prison.
  •  Trump’s executive orders targeting individuals who had criticized him — including Chris Krebs, who had challenged his 2020 election lies.
  • stripping the security clearances of law firms who had challenged him. 
  • Trump’s threats to strip licenses from media critics.
  • allowing Elon Musk’s team to access sensitive and protected taxpayer information.
  • when his top aides were caught chatting about military action on Signal.
  • firing six National Security Council officials on advice from far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer.
  • refusing to rule out the use of military force to seize Greenland. 
  • Trump’s purge of top generals, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
  • sending masked agents to seize people on the streets.
  • arresting international students for little more than for writing op-eds.
  • when White House aide Stephen Miller said that administration was considering suspending habeas corpus.

Sykes list–which I would emphasize is far from comprehensive–was generated as Americans learned of Qatar’s offer of a “gift”–a plane described as a “palace in the sky.”  The offer was, as Sykes says, “a very visible symbol of Trump’s susceptibility to corruption.” But–as he also reminds us– we have seen countless other examples.

Sen. Chris Murphy, for example, has been banging the drum about Trump’s potential $TRUMP crypto conflict of interest for months. “My hair has been on fire about the meme coin from day one,” Murphy told The Washington Post. “That is a level of corruption that is just absolutely stunning. It was already the most corrupt thing a president has ever done in the history of the United States.”

What didn’t make Syke’s list is the Trump administration’s effort to neuter the other two branches of government.

Under the Constitution, Congress and the courts are “co-equal” with the Executive branch, but Trump and MAGA have bullied the Republicans in Congress into submission. (Given that the GOP is currently in the majority, Democrats have been left with limited options for resistance–a good reason to put those options to maximum use.)

Unlike Congress, the courts–at least, the lower federal courts–have fulfilled their Constitutional role. They have ruled for the plaintiffs in virtually every case challenging Trump’s illegal and unconstitutional actions–but while Trump has given lip service to obeying those rulings, he continues to ignore a number of them. At the same time, he has increased his threats against judges who dare to rule against him, and MAGA thugs (Trump’s “brownshirts”) have taken to issuing threats against the judiciary and their families.

We the People need to leave a large civic lump of coal in the Trump stocking. Sooner rather than later.

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