Author Archives: Sheila

What Real Conservatives Understand

Bret Stephens is a conservative columnist for the New York Times. He recently penned an essay titled “Democracy Dies in Dumbness”–a take-off the Washington Post’s slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” That essay made two points I’ve tried to convey here.

Genuine conservatives, like Stephens, are appalled by what is being done by the MAGA radicals who are routinely identified as conservative. MAGA, Trump and Musk are anything but, and to label them such is an affront to actual conservatives. The second point–and the one amply documented in Stephens’ essay– is that the most obvious element of this horrific administration is its profound stupidity.

A lot of people, especially well-meaning “libruls,” strain to find some nefarious logic to the disasters Trump is perpetrating in Washington–some evidence that he’s an “evil genius,” or at the very least operating with some sort of intent, misplaced though it may be. To this I say bullfeathers! He’s ignorant, very stupid and also very clearly mentally ill. (I leave it to each of you to decide what that says about those in his devoted MAGA base.)

Stephens detailed much of the ignorance:

It used to be common knowledge — not just among policymakers and economists but also high school students with a grasp of history — that tariffs are a terrible idea. The phrase “beggar thy neighbor” meant something to regular people, as did the names of Senator Reed Smoot and Representative Willis Hawley. Americans broadly understood how much their 1930 tariff, along with other protectionist and isolationist measures, did to turn a global economic crisis into another world war. Thirteen successive presidents all but vowed never to repeat those mistakes.

Until Donald Trump. Until him, no U.S. president had been so ignorant of the lessons of history. Until him, no U.S. president had been so incompetent in putting his own ideas into practice.

Stephens labels Trump “a willful, erratic and heedless president,” and says he’s prepared to risk both the U.S. and the global economy “to make his ideological point.” I disagree with him only on his evident belief that Trump has an “ideological point.”  I really doubt that Trump could spell ideological, let alone that he possess an articulable “point” he wants to make. He acts solely out of grievance, racism, anger and an insatiable desire for attention–as the inconsistency of his impulsive and damaging actions show, there is no coherent belief system motivating any of this.

Stephens does take on the obvious stupidity:

The Department of Government Efficiency won’t end well. It is neither a department nor efficient — and “government efficiency” is, by Madisonian design, an oxymoron. A gutted I.R.S. work force won’t lower your taxes; it will delay your refund. Mass firings of thousands of federal employees won’t result in a more productive work force; it will mean a decade of litigation and billions of dollars in legal fees. High-profile eliminations of wasteful spending (some real, others not) won’t make a dent in federal spending; they’ll mask the untouchable drivers of our $36 trillion debt: Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and defense.

Just as you don’t cure cancer by shutting down cancer research, walking away from NATO won’t achieve greater security for anyone, including ourselves. What passes for Trumpian foreign policy has already done incalculable damage. His “policy”– centered on cozying up to Russia– is monumentally stupid; as Stephens notes, what Trump has achieved internationally is a Russia that sees even less reason to settle, a Europe that sees more reason to go its own way, a China that believes America will eventually fold, and a once-again betrayed Ukraine that will have even less reason to trust international guarantees of its security.

In his last paragraph, Stephens makes a point with which I entirely agree.

Trump’s critics are always quick to see the sinister sides of his actions and declarations. An even greater danger may lie in the shambolic nature of his policymaking. Democracy may die in darkness. It may die in despotism. Under Trump, it’s just as liable to die in dumbness.

I just hope that there will be a government to salvage when we finally eject Trump, Musk, the clown show they’ve assembled and the sorry bunch of Christian Nationalists and elected invertebrates who continue to enable them.

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It Isn’t “Rigging”–But It’s Just As Bad

Our mob-boss-channeling President attributes any losses he experiences to various nefarious plots against him–that poll was rigged, that data has been tampered with…and especially, he couldn’t have lost that 2020 election fair and square, it must have been “rigged.” His inability to grow up has infected the MAGA cult, which is now busy deconstructing things they very obviously don’t understand. 

Just as there are perfectly reasonable efforts to improve government efficiency–efforts that don’t require destroying the village in order to save it–there are deficiencies (mostly unintentional) in election administration that operate to disenfranchise voters and skew election results. Here in Indiana, where Republicans rule and don’t worry a lot about the consequences of what they’re doing, those sloppy irregularities can significantly affect close elections.

That was in all likelihood the case in the contest between Tiffany Stoner and Becky Cash for Indiana House District 25–a race Stoner lost by 64 votes our of several thousands cast. I don’t understand why the Democrats didn’t demand a recount, given the extensive evidence of irregularities the party uncovered in the two weeks following the election.

A Democratic compendium of those irregularities included the following:

Approximately 280 absentee mail-in ballots were rejected across Hendricks County. The clerk’s office never gave a definitive and accurate number despite several requests.

An unknown number of absentee ballots were sent to voters without the required security initials from the clerk’s office. After the error was discovered, the clerk knowingly chose not to inform voters that their ballots would be rejected due to the office’s mistake. Consequently, any completed and returned ballots were not counted, and the affected voters remain unaware of this issue. 

Voting machines were left unattended at polling locations overnight, raising concerns about their security. One machine was powered off and its votes were not even tallied until the following day, while another was found to be broken and went unused. 

The county clerk’s office rejected dozens of absentee ballots, citing signature mismatches. However, signatures can vary due to changes in style, age, illness, or disability. Notices were sent via the postal service to affected voters on November 7th, requiring them to submit a signed affidavit by 12 noon on November 13th. This left voters with very little time to address the issue and resolve the rejection.

The county election board rejected a military ballot, claiming the signature did not match the one on file. This decision denied an active-duty service member, currently defending our freedoms, their vote. Moreover, they were not provided the legally required notice or opportunity to correct the issue.

Mistakes occurred in voter registration and the transfer of registrations between government agencies. For instance, the BMV failed to include a voter’s signature in one case. In other instances, voters who registered through the Secretary of State’s portal discovered their registrations were never processed. One voter with an Indianapolis address, but residing in Hendricks County was forced to vote provisionally after their registration was erroneously sent to Marion County.

Inspectors weren’t present at any early voting site. This is required by statute on election day and most counties employ these same secure practices in early voting.  One description we received from a poll-worker said, “everyone and no one was in charge.” We even discovered an instance where a librarian gave the keys to the room where voting machines were secured to a poll worker without confirming their identification.

These errors very obviously disenfranchised some number of voters. (You might expect the party of “election integrity” to care, but you’d be wrong. It’s not about integrity; it’s all about winning.) Whether these lapses in competent administration would have changed the outcome of that election is unknown, but the mere number of errors certainly should affect voters’–and candidates’– confidence in the system.

In the wake of the election, several Democrats have called for the creation of a nonpartisan voter protection organization. In stark contrast to the typical GOP whining about the “unfairness” of losses and unfounded accusations of “rigging,” that proposal sounds…what’s that word…adult.

In fact, looking into the documented irregularities of the Hendricks County vote prompted me to contemplate the differences between Democrats and MAGA Republicans that are demonstrated by their responses to election losses. It occurred to me that America’s political polarization isn’t between the informed and uninformed, or the educated and uneducated–striking as those divisions are.

It’s between grown ups and children throwing tantrums.

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What Did You Do In The War?

Ah, the parallels…

Those of us of a “certain age” can recall media reports of post-World War II German children asking their grandparents very uncomfortable questions, mostly versions of “What did you do during the war, grandpa?” We may well be approaching a time in the United States where a version of that question becomes widespread.

A year or so ago, Saturday Night Live aired a mock interview with a German woman who responded to a question about America’s “alt-right” MAGA movement by saying “In America you call it the alt-right, in Germany we call it ‘why Grandpapa lives in Argentina now.'”

A number of historians have documented the embarrassing connections between America’s Jim Crow laws and Nazi anti-semitic legislation. I will admit to being one of the clueless folks who believed we had surmounted–okay, begun to surmount–the ignorance and prejudices of former generations. If the current Trump/Musk assault on basic American principles proves anything, it proves how very wrong that belief has turned out to be. You really have to be purposefully blind to ignore the virulent bigotry that allowed Trump to win election (narrowly, to be sure) and reward his supporters with his anti-diversity rampage, or to downplay the pro-Nazi enthusiasm of Elon Musk, which was evident well before his “heil Hitler” salute.

So here we are. And assuming (as I devoutly hope) that this horrific time will pass and reasonable people will once again gain control, those of us experiencing this effort to re-install the Dark Ages should expect that same post-Nazi question: what did we do to counter the assault on American values? How did we respond to the neo-Nazi ugliness threatening our Constitutional liberties and social progress?

What did we do during this war for America’s soul?

I thought about that question when I came to the end of one of Robert Hubbell’s daily letters. Hubbell had been writing about Trump’s effort to punish law firms for the unforgivable sin of representing people he considers enemies. But as he concluded, the challenge to our most deeply-shared moral commitments extends more widely.

We are living through a consequential moment in our nation’s history. There is a “right” side and a “wrong” side to that history. Someday in the not-too-distant future, there will be a reckoning in which everyone—individuals and institutions—will be called to justify their response in a moment when democracy was under attack.

Institutions with proud histories will be forced to explain why they abandoned their commitments to fairness, justice, and human decency at the first opportunity. Were they afraid? Or greedy? Both? Or—worst of all—did they not care?

Were their lofty “mission statements” mere PR exercises to make themselves feel good and attract young talent with false promises about the firm’s values? Were their commitments to equality and inclusion something they never truly believed? Was it all “for show”?

Those are uncomfortable questions with deeply troubling answers.

We must choose to be on the right side of history—because it is the right thing to do. Do not surrender to fear or intimidation. Lift up those who are being attacked for defending the rule of law. And make known your displeasure with the products and services of those who are sponsoring Trump’s frontal assault on the rule of law.

But most importantly, make a personal commitment to do everything you can to help defend democracy in its hour of need. Make your future self proud by doing the right thing at a time when doing so takes courage and determination!

The most anguished question I get from readers of this blog–and I get it almost every day–is “what can I do?” And it’s a fair question. Most of us have limited means of protesting, and the means we do have are arguably of limited effectiveness. Still, when we get that “what did you do” question, at the very least we should be able to answer that we repeatedly called our elected officials, attended town halls, worked with one or more of the burgeoning number of grassroots organizations, attended protests and participated in boycotts of companies and firms that are knuckling under.

We should also be able to say that we shared factual information with friends and family members living in those “alternative” realities.

Repeat after me: real Americans are identified by their devotion to and protection of the American Idea-– not their skin color or religion. When your grandchildren or great grandchildren ask what you did when Trump/Musk attacked the American Idea, be sure you don’t have to answer from Argentina.

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The Real DEI

As Trump and Musk continue to destroy the government agencies that monitor or prevent the illegal activities that enrich them, they’ve pursued an ancillary effort that lays bare the source of Trump’s narrow electoral win: MAGA’s war on “wokism” in general and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs in particular.

As I have previously noted, the animosity toward efforts to address social and legal discrimination are part and parcel of an unfortunate but persistent strain of American bigotry. To our shame, millions of Americans have defended slavery and Jim Crow, opposed votes for women, donned white sheets and marched with the Ku Klux Klan. Others–who were less virulent but no less bigoted–merely refrained from hiring or otherwise doing business with minority folks, and blackballed Blacks and Jews from their country clubs and other venues.

The current assaults, ironically, are evidence of the nation’s historic protection of straight White Christian males from the uncomfortable reality that they are not a superior breed. It turns out that intellect, character and ability–and absences thereof– are pretty equally distributed among all races, religions and genders.

For confirmation of that fact, we need look no farther than the collection of clowns, incompetents and sycophants Trump has installed in important positions, and compare them to the credentialed and competent “DEI hires” he ejected from those same positions. If we ever needed evidence that White skin is no guarantee of intelligence, integrity or competence, virtually all of Trump’s appointees provide that evidence.

Trump’s base undoubtedly approves of the ferocity with which the administration has pursued its assault on anti-discrimination efforts, but it turns out that Americans in general have moved on from the days when your police chief was a disciple of Sheriff James Clark and your friendly banker or dentist was a Grand Dragon of the KKK.

A recent article in the Atlantic looked at the survey research, and concluded that the extreme positions—and appointments—of the Trump administration are wildly at odds with the views of most Americans.

The extreme positions—and appointments—of the Trump administration are self-evidently at odds with Americans’ views in the main. Recently, Trump appointed Darren Beattie to a senior diplomatic position at the State Department. Beattie is notorious for making arguments such as “Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work. Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men.” I don’t need to look at survey data to argue that this is a fringe position.

Earlier in the article, the author did look at survey data, and shared evidence of Americans’ views on DEI efforts in general.

Given the way this administration has targeted DEI and “woke” policies, you’d be forgiven for assuming that Americans were completely on board. Yet according to a Pew Research Center poll conducted right before the election, just one-fifth of employed adults think that focusing on DEI at work is “a bad thing.” Even among workers who are Republican or lean Republican, a minority (42 percent) say that focusing on DEI is “a bad thing.” In a January poll from Harris/Axios, a majority of Americans said DEI initiatives had no impact on their career; more respondents among nearly every demographic polled (including white people, men, and Republicans) said they believed it had benefited their careers more than it had hindered them. (The sole, amusing exception being Gen X.) A June 2024 poll from The Washington Post and Ipsos found that six in 10 Americans believed DEI programs were “a good thing.” And all of this was before any backlash to Trump’s presidency had time to set in.

An early signal that the administration is overreaching comes from a Washington Post poll on early Trump-administration actions, which found that voters oppose ending DEI programs in the federal government (49–46) and banning trans people from the military (53–42). When asked about one of Trump’s signature issues, deportation, the poll showed that, by a nearly 20-point margin, Americans do not want people to be deported if they “have not broken laws in the United States except for immigration laws.” It’s hard to imagine that those same Americans approve of sending a man to Gitmo for riding his bike on the wrong side of the street, or of calling a city’s administrator for homelessness services a “DEI hire” because she’s a white woman.

If there’s one thing Trump excels at, it’s demonstrating that White Christian men are not universally superior–and that those who most resent DEI tend to be both unintelligent and dangerously inept.

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Who Do You Distrust?

In 2009, I wrote a book titled “Distrust, American Style.” The publisher’s blurb summed up its theme: “When people wake up every morning to a system that doesn’t respond to their efforts or accomodate their most basic needs, it should not be surprising that they don’t face the day with an abundance of trust.”

Declining trust has ominous implications for something that sociologists call social capital--the relationships among members of society that facilitate individual and/or collective action. The term refers to networks of human relationships that are characterized by reciprocity and trust. As one scholarly paper has put it, social capital is the lubricant that facilitates getting things done, that allows people to work together and benefit from social relationships. It is absolutely essential to the internal coherence of society– the “glue” that facilitates social and economic functioning.

It isn’t really necessary to understand the functioning and varieties of social capital to understand the importance of trust. Think about your daily activities: you drop your favorite sweater off at the cleaners, trusting that it will be returned–clean. You deposit your paycheck in your bank, trusting that the funds will be credited to your account and available to spend. You  pick up a prescription, trusting that the medication has been properly prepared and is safe. At the grocery, you trust that food you buy is safe to eat. You board a plane, trusting that it will not crash into another mid-air.

You get the picture. In the absence of trust, society and the economy cannot function. And an enormous amount of that trust is based upon effective and competent government regulation of banks, food processors and air traffic (among other things).

In my book, I examined the decline of social trust, and the theories being offered for that decline. Robert Putnam suggested that growing diversity had eroded interpersonal trust; my own research pointed to a different culprit: the prominent failures of religious,  business and governmental institutions. When I wrote the book, America was in the midst of widely-reported scandals: Enron and other major companies engaging in illegal activities, sports figures taking performance-enhancing drugs, the Catholic Church covering up priestly child molestation, and several others. We were just emerging from an Iraq war widely understood to have been waged on specious grounds.

My conclusion was that fish rot from the head–that when a citizenry is no longer able to trust its economic and governing and religious institutions–especially its governing institutions– that lack of trust threatens essential elements of social functioning.

In the years since, our entire environment has become rife with distrust. White Christian Nationalists suspect and reject most elements of modernity; we’re faced with the enormous gap between the rich and the rest (and evidence that not all the rich amassed those fortunes ethically or legally); we have a rogue judiciary, a castrated Congress, and most recently a federal coup by mentally-ill autocrats intent upon destroying the government agencies that have been most effective at earning citizens’ trust.

A recent Gallup Poll surveyed the trust landscape, to determine who we still trust–and who we don’t.

Three in four Americans consider nurses highly honest and ethical, making them the most trusted of 23 professions rated in Gallup’s annual measurement. Grade-school teachers rank second, with 61% viewing them highly, while military officers, pharmacists and medical doctors also earn high trust from majorities of Americans.

The least trusted professions, with more than half of U.S. adults saying their ethics are low or very low, are lobbyists, members of Congress and TV reporters.

Of the remaining occupations measured in the Dec. 2-18, 2024, poll, six (including police officers, clergy and judges) are viewed more positively than negatively by Americans, although with positive ratings not reaching the majority level. The other nine, notably including bankers, lawyers and business executives, are seen more negatively than positively, with  more than 50% rating their ethics low.

That poll was conducted before the takeover of our government by Trump and Musk, before the clearly illegal, unethical and untruthful activities that have–in Steve Bannon’s immortal words–“flooded the zone with shit.” Even before that assault, Gallup reported that there had been a serious long-term decline in Americans’ confidence in U.S. institutions. Trust in Judges, police and clergy has plummeted.

In that 2009 book, I wrote that the trustworthiness of business and nonprofit enterprises depends on the ability of government to play its essential role as “umpire,’ impartially applying and reliably enforcing the rules. When government is not trustworthy, when citizens cannot rely on the Food and Drug Administration, the FAA or the Social Security Administration, among others, trust and social capital decline.

We’re back to Hobbes’ state of nature.

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