Category Archives: Random Blogging

Bruce Springsteen Gets It

During a concert in Europe, Bruce Springsteen issued a criticism of Trump and his administration that generated a typically childish response from our thin-skinned autocrat.  Springsteen’s comments–unlike Trump’s– displayed a fundamental understanding of what it means to be an American–“the union of people around a common set of values.” That union, he said, is “now that’s all that stands between a democracy and authoritarianism. So at the end of the day, all we’ve got is each other.”

Springsteen recognized an essential element of American identity, an element that MAGA appears incapable of comprehending: America is, and has always been, about a set of ideals. 

Back in 1997, I wrote that it is the mission of public education to identify and transmit the values Americans hold in common,  the values enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and reflected through our national history.

What is the “American Idea”?

Americans value liberty. We believe in our inalienable right to hold our own opinions, to think for ourselves, to assemble with our friends, to cast our votes, to pray or not, all free of government coercion.
 
We value equality before the law– not to be confused with the fuzzy notion that we are all somehow interchangeable, and not to be confused with the belief of some religions that all people are equally worthwhile. This is a more limited proposition – –  that government should apply the same rules to all similarly-situated citizens. It was a radical notion in 1776. It is fundamental to the way we understand ourselves and our society today.
 
We value the marketplace of ideas, the supreme importance of our ability to communicate with each other, unfettered by government censorship.
 
We value government legitimacy and respect for the rule of law. So long as our representatives continue to derive their authority from the consent of those they govern, we recognize our individual obligations to respect and obey the law. If we protest a law we believe to be unjust, we recognize our obligation to accept the consequences of that disobedience. (Tell that to the Jan. 6th insurrectionists pardoned by Trump…)
 
Finally, real Americans value the “woke” civic virtues which are necessary to the realization of the foregoing values: honesty, courage, kindness, mutual respect and tolerance.

In a country where people read different books and magazines, patronize different websites and news sources, attend different churches, and even speak different languages – where the information and beliefs we all share are diminishing and our variety and diversity are growing –these are the core values that make us Americans. They are nowhere to be seen in MAGA or the Trump administration.

Recently, David Brooks underlined the difference between Americans who define patriotism as allegiance to those overarching values, and the “blood and soil” Trumpers.

Trump and Vance have to rebut the idea that America is the embodiment of universal ideals. If America is an idea, then Black and brown people from all over the world can become Americans by coming here and believing that idea. If America is an idea, then Americans have a responsibility to promote democracy. We can’t betray democratic Ukraine in order to kowtow to a dictator like Vladimir Putin. If America is an idea, we have to care about human dignity and human rights. You can’t have a president go to Saudi Arabia, as Trump did this month, and effectively tell them we don’t care how you treat your people. If you want to dismember journalists you don’t like, we’re not going to worry about it….

If America is built around a universalist ideal, then there is no room for the kind of white identity politics that Trump and Stephen Miller practice every day. There is no room for the othering, zero-sum, us/them thinking, which is the only kind of thinking Trump is capable of. There’s no room for Trump’s immigration policy, which is hostile to Latin Americans but hospitable to the Afrikaners whose ancestors invented apartheid. There’s no room for Tucker Carlson’s replacement theory. There’s no room for the kind of racialized obsessions harbored, for example, by the paleoconservative writer Paul Gottfried in an essay called “America Is Not an ‘Idea,’” in Chronicles magazine: “Segregation was also an unjust arrangement, and I don’t regret seeing that go either. But what has taken its place is infinitely more frightening: the systematic degradation of white Americans.”

Brooks is right to accuse this Trumpian cabal of moral degradation, of substituting an ugly tribalism for genuine patriotism.

Springsteen is also right: people unified around American ideals can defeat Trump’s efforts to debase America. We all need to turn out for No Kings Day.

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Making Voting Hard

A fear often expressed by members of the Resistance is the possibility that Trump will declare a “national emergency” of some sort and use that declaration to cancel the midterm election. I don’t entirely discount that possibility, but I do think it is unlikely, for a number of reasons.

That said, the fear is reasonable, based on the GOP’s persistent assault on voters’ rights, and on its long history of vote suppression. The Brennan Center recently shared their study of the effects of those efforts, and the conclusions are depressing. It turns out that there are multiple ways of invalidating an election without actually cancelling it.

States have enacted dozens of laws that make it harder for citizens to vote. What impact will they have in next year’s vital midterm elections?

The Brennan Center has provided compelling evidence that these laws directly suppress the vote. And our newest research shows, even more significantly, that eligible voters turned away from casting a ballot once are much less likely to try again in later elections. They give up, it seems. Voter suppression can last years, perhaps a lifetime. That is a deeply disturbing finding, suggesting that even small effects of these new laws can cascade over time.  

Researchers looked at the results of S.B. 1, a Texas law making it more difficult to vote by mail. The state rejected thousands of mail ballot requests and mail-in votes during the 2022 primary. (Unsurprisingly the rejections were disproportionately those of nonwhite voters.)

They found that the voters whose ballots were rejected were 16 percentage points less likely to vote in the 2022 general election. “And the trend continued for the 2024 primary election — a full two years later.” As the report emphasized, “These citizens are not disinterested slackers. These are routine voters who have properly cast ballots year after year — 85 percent of those whose mail-in votes or ballot requests were rejected voted in the 2016, 2018, and 2020 general elections.”

This is one more strong piece of evidence that the recent wave of restrictive voting laws will have a great and growing impact. Last year, a Brennan Center study relying on a voter file with nearly 1 billion records showed that the gap between the participation rates of white voters and nonwhite voters has grown across the country — but grew at twice the rate in counties once monitored by a robust Voting Rights Act.

Some have suggested that the tumult over these new voting laws was sound and fury that ultimately signified little. Sure, they say, these laws may have had bad intent, but the impact was negligible.

As it turns out, voter suppression laws . . . suppress the vote. Who’d have thought it? 

If readers from central Indiana are interested in learning more about the impact of the GOP’s ongoing effort to suppress the vote, Common Cause is screening an important film at the Kan Kan theater on June 12th at 7:00 pm.

The documentary film, Vigilantes Inc, is based upon reporting done by investigative journalist Greg Palast, and it reveals how self-appointed “vote-fraud hunters” challenge the ballots of millions of voters–with a special emphasis on young voters and voters of color. There will be a discussion following the screening, featuring the filmmaker and Indiana advocates fighting voter suppression. 

You can buy tickets here.

As the Brennan Center article points out, the effects of long lines at a polling place, requirements to produce birth certificates or proof of citizenship, or “errors” disqualifying a ballot can effectively suppress an individual’s motivation to vote for years–even a lifetime.

Political analyst Michael Podhorzer has astutely observed that a “generational replacement” is being engineered: “Older and established voters keep up their voting habits, while new restrictions stymie younger voters.” Our research shows the effects of voter suppression on older voters, but it underscores how potent silent disenfranchisement can be…

The right kind of national legislation would expand access while strengthening election administration and security. The Freedom to Vote Act would set baseline national standards to ensure that ballots cannot be discarded for minor errors and discrepancies, and it would bar many state restrictions on mail and early voting. The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would restore the strength of the Voting Rights Act.

These reforms came achingly close to enactment a few years ago. We predicted then that if the federal courts and Congress did not protect the freedom to vote, states would be left unchecked to abuse the rights of their people. Sadly, that has happened. Congress should once again be prepared to act.

If your schedule permits, go see “Vigilantes” on June 12th. And vote for Democrats to take Congress next year, assuming there’s an election…

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The Would-Be King

Phil Gulley is a Quaker pastor in Indiana and a clear-eyed observer of the human condition. Quakers value peace, integrity, community, and stewardship of the Earth–values that our mad would-be king disdains and desecrates. Phil recently shared an essay in which he described the multiple ways in which Trump and his MAGA base offend Quaker, American and human values, and he graciously allowed me to share it. It’s below. (He also has a Substack, for those of us who follow him.)

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A Criminal Syndicate

         Have you ever met someone who reminded you of someone else? When I first heard Pete Buttigieg, I was reminded of Richard Lugar, another well-spoken, intelligent Hoosier. When I met my wife, she reminded me of Katharine Hepburn, with whom she shared a classy, no-nonsense manner. I’m sure my rugged good looks reminded her of Spencer Tracy. When Donald Trump emerged on the political scene, I felt a spark of recognition. I know that man from somewhere else, I told myself. Then I remembered. Donald Trump reminds me of Tony Soprano. Both are swaggering bullies. Both are vicious, violent, and rapacious criminals, heading up criminal syndicates. Except one is fictional and one is not.

         There is no such thing as a Trump Administration. There is a Trump Syndicate, a crime family, a consortium of thugs, underlings, felons, and grifters, purporting to be public servants while carrying out a global campaign of theft, pilfering America’s treasury, peddling access to the Mobster-in-Chief, Donald Trump, while gutting the very agencies that would hold them accountable to the rule of law.

         Theirs is a master class in fraud, unparalleled in American history. The foxes are guarding the henhouse, which by the end of his term will be gutted. A democracy almost 250 years in the making has been stripped bare in one bleak and wintry season. The collective effort of twelve generations of Americans has been decimated by Hair Hitler and his Brownshirts. This is what I grieve the most, that tens of millions of Americans voted for a man who’d made no secret of his disdain for decency and duty. All his life, he has been the poster child of decadence—greedy, grasping, uncaring, and corrupt. He has never had a friend, only servile bootlickers collecting the crumbs that slip through his tiny hands, selling their souls for thirty pieces of silver. They, like he, merit a Judas death—abandoned and ashamed—their names a curse on the lips of history.

         He ventures from the White House only long enough to plunder, gathering jet planes and sweetheart deals from the sponsors of global terrorism, peddling his cryptocoins, favoring those who purchase them, tyrannizing those who don’t. Like all crime bosses, it is himself he is serving and no one else, so he will leave the presidency far richer than he entered it. His is a transactional presidency, our shared public treasure rummaged at fire-sale prices to his cronies.

         Anyone who dares protest is called out on middle-of-the-night tweets—Bruce Springsteen, Taylor Swift, colleges, professors, foreign presidents with the audacity to stand against tyranny, Mexico, Canada, and liberals. What an honor it would be to be singled out for attack by Donald Trump, to be labeled an enemy of his brutish ignorance. If we are known by the company we keep, we are also known by the company we find so repulsive we would dedicate our lives to resisting it. If he is naming his enemies, number me among them. I detest everything about him and all he represents−fascism, meanness, ignorance, and cruelty.

         Like all mob bosses, to remain in his good favor requires an envelope of cash slipped into his silken pocket. His goons rise each morning and go forth, strong-arming America, threatening, intimidating, collecting the daily take, promising safety to those who comply and ruination to those who refuse.  Now we are separating the men from the boys, and shame on the boys, shame on those who buckle under, the law firms and tech bros, whose donations fund this Thief-of-State. With billions of dollars at their disposal, with teams of lawyers at their beck and call, they tremble in fear of this strutting bully and what he might tweet about them. Their spinelessness is not only appalling, but traitorous. A pox upon them all.

         Washington and Lincoln have their memorials, but there will be no such marker for Trump. Should one be erected, it will be torn down by those who cannot bear to see such a man saluted. There won’t be enough tomatoes in the world to register history’s disgust, nor enough guards to safekeep his marker. He should enjoy the braying accolades he is receiving now, since his future will lack the faintest note of praise.

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Don’t Let The Light Go Out

These are dark days for those of us who follow the news. Most of us need reassurance that we can do something–that we can make at least a modest contribution to what I’ve called the Resistance, that we can join with the millions of other Americans who are appalled and frightened by the insanity of the Trump administration.

In these difficult and challenging times, I read a lot of the pundits and pollsters and “wise men” who write for legacy media and issue Substack letters, and while I find many of them to be thought-provoking and analytically helpful, it is rare to read a column or essay that gives me hope and encourages activism.

On the other hand, although I’m embarrassed to admit it, I often do react positively to the lyrics of a song. (It’s especially embarrassing because I mostly listen when I’m on the treadmill, trying to keep my aging body moving..)

As my grandchildren will attest, my musical preferences are firmly anchored in the past. I know very few of the famous vocalists who came after the Rat Pack, my favorite songs from musical theater tend to be from oldies-and-goodies like “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Kiss Me Kate,” and I have a special fondness for the folk music of the 60s and 70s. While I’m sure more contemporary compositions also have life lessons to share, I’ve missed them.

These admissions are by way of explaining why I found a Peter Paul and Mary song so relevant to our times. I was grinding out my minutes on the treadmill by listening to folk songs when “Light One Candle” came into the rotation. Those of you who share my age cohort probably remember the lyrics. It began:

… Light one candle for the Maccabee children
Give thanks that their light didn’t die
Light one candle for the pain they endured
When their right to exist was denied

… Light one candle for the terrible sacrifice
Justice and freedom demand
And light one candle for the wisdom to know
When the peacemaker’s time is at hand

And then the chorus–an admonition for our time if there ever was one:

… Don’t let the light go out!
It’s lasted for so many years
Don’t let the light go out!
Let it shine through our love and our tears

… Light one candle for the strength that we need
To never become our own foe
And light one candle for those who are suff’ring
Pain we learned so long ago

… Light one candle for all we believe in
Let anger not tear us apart!
Light one candle to bind us together
With peace as the song in our heart

… What is the memory that’s valued so highly
That we keep it alive in that flame?
What’s the commitment to those who have died
When we cry out they’ve not died in vain

… We have come this far, always believing
That justice will somehow prevail
This is the burning, this is the promise
And this is why we will not fail

I know that many people are giving up and choosing to leave the United States right now. Scientists are being wooed by countries that still respect empirical reality; businesspeople are opting for countries where the rule of law protects commerce; growing numbers of retirees are becoming expats in places that combine warmth with fiscal stability and rational governance.

It is, after all, a difficult time to be a patriotic American.

But millions of us can “light a candle and ensure that justice prevails.” We can take to the streets in large numbers, peacefully demonstrating our commitment to the Constitution, to the vision of America that so many have died to protect.  We can all participate in “No Kings Day,” June 14th, for example.

Indivisible and a huge coalition of pro-democracy partner organizations are planning a nationwide day of defiance on Flag Day (June 14). The protests are set to take place during Donald Trump’s grotesque military parade in Washington, D.C. Instead of allowing this military parade to be the center of national attention, activists will make national protest the story of America that day.  Alongside local organizers, partners, and leaders from across the pro-democracy and pro-worker movements, activists across the country will come together for marches, rallies, and demonstrations to reject the corrupt, authoritarian politics currently defiling the United States.

From city blocks to small towns, from courthouse steps to community parks, citizens will be taking action to reject Trump’s demented authoritarianism, to show the world that a united population is refusing to be ruled by a would-be monarch.

Participants will light a (metaphorical) candle. It mustn’t be the last.

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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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