Category Archives: Random Blogging

Speaking Up

A couple of weeks ago, I read a media account about a Pennsylvania man who’d sent an email to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), urging the use of “common sense and decency” in an upcoming case. Within hours of sending the email, DHS issued a subpoena to Google for the man’s information. Two weeks later, two DHS agents and a local police officer visited his home to interrogate him about the email. 

When my husband and I discussed the incident, he admitted to worrying about similar reactions to the sentiments I express in these daily rants….

A few days later, in a conversation with my younger grandson, we addressed the issue from another angle: not whether citizens have a First Amendment right to criticise the government (we absolutely do, as the ACLU evidently reminded DHS after that interrogation), but whether patriotic citizenship implies a positive duty to speak truth to power, to defend American principles when they are under attack. We concluded that such a duty exists, even in situations when speaking up may involve a measure of risk.

I thought about those conversations when I read one of Robert Hubbell’s recent newsletters. Hubbell was clarifying his previous reaction to the way in which Anderson Cooper had departed from Sixty Minutes. His criticism wasn’t about the departure; it was about Cooper’s muted explanation of the reasons for that departure. Hubbell went on to make a point that directly addressed the immense importance of speaking up at times like these.

Here’s what he wrote:

We live in a fraught moment in which we have three choices for responding to Trump’s attempt to end democracy: capitulation, remaining silent, or raising our voices.

In reality, there are only two choices because capitulation and remaining silent are the same. Both advance Trump’s agenda, even though they involve different degrees of cooperation. But, in the end, dictators count on most people shrinking into the shadows. When good people remain silent, it becomes easier for the dictator to target those who raise their voices.

Let’s use Mark Kelly and the five other members of Congress who participated in the video about the duty to refuse illegal orders (Sen. Slotkin and Reps. Crow, Goodlander, Deluzio, and Houlahan). They made a brave choice. Rather than remaining silent as the US military murdered helpless civilians clinging to a shipwreck, they spoke out. Their leadership by example illustrates why they were good soldiers and commanders, and why they are good members of Congress.

As expected, Trump directed his ire at the six legislators, going so far as to seek indictments against everyone in the small group. They might still be indicted; they might still lose their retirement rank and pay. They remain at risk for speaking out.

Let’s imagine an alternate scenario. Suppose the day after Trump accused Kelly and others of sedition and called for the death penalty, the 93 additional members of Congress who are retired military veterans released the same video. And then the next day, 100 retired generals and admirals released the same video. And the next day, another 100 retired generals and admirals made the same video. As the number of those speaking out mounted, Trump and Hegseth would have retreated into sullen silence.

But because good and honorable men and women have chosen to remain silent, they are abandoning their colleagues during the most important fight of their lives. The other retired military members in Congress and retired generals and admirals are leaving Kelly and the others exposed to enemy fire, even though they have the capacity to provide cover merely by ending their silence.

Anderson Cooper quietly left CBS as it was being censored at the hands of Bari Weiss, paid for by Larry and David Ellison, to please Donald Trump. Anderson Cooper remained silent when he could have spoken the truth. That was a choice. Just like it is a choice for retired military members of Congress who send private text messages of encouragement to Kelly and the others but lack the courage to speak the same truth. Their silence is a choice.

 The simple but profound act of bearing witness to the truth by standing on a roadside or an overpass with a protest sign is a choice. It is the right one. It is a choice that inspires others. It tells them there is strength in numbers. It tells them not to lose hope.

Kelly, Slotkin, Crow, Goodlander, Deluzio, and Houlahan made a choice.

Their retired military colleagues in Congress made a choice.

Anderson Cooper made a choice.

We are being called upon to make a choice. Let’s make the right one.

I couldn’t agree more!

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Vice Signaling

The Guardian recently published an article addressing the degraded rhetoric ushered in by MAGA and employed non-stop by Trump.

We all are familiar with the concept of “virtue signaling”–-defined as publicly taking progressive positions that can seem performative–efforts to burnish one’s moral credentials, or demonstrate “right-thinking” (with a lower-case r.) As the article says, it can be easy to lampoon. (When I purchased my first Prius, a colleague suggested that driving a hybrid fell into that category.)

Trump, of course, has exhibited the opposite–what the article calls “vice signaling”–a penchant for dehumanisation that is the  opposite of decency. They’re not in the same rhetorical category. It began with his campaign launch, when he announced that he would build a wall between the US and Mexico in remarks the article described as ungrammatical with a vocabulary that was vague and repetitive. (The embarrassing third grade level characteristics of “Trump speech” that we have now come to expect.)

This is classic vice-signalling, breaking taboos in this case both general (against hate speech) and more specific (against falsely associating base or criminal traits with a race or ethnic group). He was signalling that he was prepared to go there –- say what the establishment would not allow, and assert himself as a politician who is authentic and courageous, who cannot be muzzled.

The recent video depicting the Obamas as apes was consistent with the racism he’s been signaling for decades. The linked article points out that such behaviors garner media attention and “break down established barriers to entry.”

What is far too infrequently discussed is what a society loses when civility of discourse is abandoned, and insults and hateful rhetoric displace respectful disagreement.

Research confirms that civil discourse leads to greater institutional trust– that tone strongly influences whether citizens view institutions as legitimate, even when they disagree with specific policies or outcomes. Without trust, compliance with the law declines and, as we are seeing, polarization deepens.

In “How Democracies Die,” Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt argued that democracy depends on “mutual toleration” and “forbearance”—both rooted in civility. Studies in social psychology show that civil environments increase people’s willingness to listen to each other and increase cross-ideological understanding—even when opinions don’t change.

Other research suggests that civility is economically consequential–high-trust, low-conflict environments attract investment, and reduce both transaction costs and regulatory friction. Social scientists like Robert Putnam have demonstrated that social capital–trust and reciprocity–leads to stronger economic growth.

There are also personal costs to marinating in an increasingly hateful and uncivil society. Medical scientists warn that chronic exposure to hostile rhetoric raises cortisol levels and increases anxiety; political science tells us that civility increases the likelihood of participation in civic life. Political science also tells us that rhetoric routinely delegitimizing elections, courts, journalists and civil servants leads to a greater tolerance of violations of important social norms, to institutional weakening, and ultimately, tolerance of violence.

As we’ve seen in our dysfunctional Congress, inflammatory rhetoric makes compromise difficult, if not impossible. It increases policy gridlock; worse, it creates a situation in which expertise is belittled and dismissed as partisan. (If you doubt that, just look at what RFK, Jr. has done to public health, or consider the consequences of Trump’s dismissal of climate change and embrace of coal mining.)

Civility isn’t silence. It isn’t the absence of protest or disagreement. It’s fundamentally a recognition of civic equality, in the sense that civil discourse implicitly recognizes that every citizen has a right to express an opinion. When discourse and even very strong disagreements are voiced in a civil and respectful manner, governments (and all institutions) benefit.

I’m not naive. I understand that individuals will often express themselves in dismissive or vulgar terms. (I am not exempt.) But when the people we have empowered–those we’ve elected to public office, or those whose celebrity means their comments will be widely shared–use demeaning and ugly rhetoric, “punching down” on those of lesser authority or status, the negative results don’t just fall on the people being demeaned. They are felt society-wide.

Every day, we learn of the profound, concrete damage this administration is doing. We learn of the corruption, the assaults on the rule of law, the efforts to reinstate Jim Crow…on and on. These assaults understandably consume our attention, but while we are compiling our lists of things we must correct once these horrible people have been ejected from our public life, we need to put “restoring civility” near the top.

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Religion, Common Sense–And Snark

Yesterday, I shared signs that the resistance to MAGA/Trump is gaining steam. Among those positive signs is the emergence of religious leaders who are now coming out in force to rebut the performative piety of the White “Christian” nationalists who make up a significant part of the MAGA cult.

The recent growth of participation by genuinely religious leaders is welcome, but we shouldn’t overlook clerics who have been addressing the evils of the administration and the hypocrisy of those “Christians” for quite some time. One of those brave souls is local Quaker pastor, Phil Gulley, who is also a noted humorist and author. (Phil now has a Substack, and if you don’t get it, you absolutely should.)

Phil is a friend, and has graciously allowed me to quote liberally from one recent essay, titled “Can I Get An Amen?”

He began by describing an incident where he was invited and subsequently dis-invited to address a Southern Baptist gathering, Gully noted that the Southern Baptist Convention “is to spirituality what Donald Trump is to education. Speaking of Donald Trump, seventy-two percent of Southern Baptists voted for him in the last election, which gives you some idea of their moral acumen.”

Gulley then turned to Trump’s “hour long dronefest” at the National Prayer Breakfast.

As rich a spiritual event as the National Day of Prayer breakfast was, I can’t help but wonder why Billy Graham, back in 1952, thought it a good idea to pray to a man who told his followers, “when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret…” Then again, religion can be a mysterious undertaking and maybe back in 1952 Jesus changed his mind and told Billy Graham to go ahead and rent out a hotel ballroom, fill it with big shots, invite the press, and have at it.

Gulley noted that Franklin Graham, Billy’s son, had skipped the event, and wondered whether

he and God might be on the outs since this past November when Graham said, “The Epstein files are nothing compared to God’s files.” I had no idea God, as Graham seems to suggest, is an even bigger pedophile than Jeffrey Epstein and I think Franklin Graham needs to tell us what he knows and when he knew it.

The essay’s conclusion is vintage Gulley.

As annoying as all these things are, what bothers me most is that the prayer breakfast was held on February 5th, my birthday, and I would have happily traveled to Washington D.C. to speak to those folks. There are things I’ve been wanting to say to Donald Trump and the Southern Baptists for some years now and it would have saved me a lot of trouble to only have to say it once, when they were all together. Since they didn’t afford me the opportunity, I’ll say it now. Do us all a favor and go into your closets, close the doors, and shut your pieholes. Leave the running of the country to those of us who still believe in the Constitution. Can I get an Amen!

I certainly say Amen!

I will also note that there is much to be said for employing humor in the face of looming disaster. (There’s a reason so many comedians are Jewish…we know a lot about disaster.) On the local level, a pundit who regularly serves up excellent–and informative–snark is Abdul Shabazz. Abdul is a lawyer; he publishes Indy Politics and serves up astute commentary with a penetrating wit as he surveys Indiana’s legislature and the Hoosier political environment.

A recent edition considered “Rino Season in Indiana.”

There’s a new sport in Indiana politics, and it’s not deer season or turkey season, or even rabbit season.

It’s RINO season.

No Quarter PAC has burst onto the scene with all the subtlety of a foghorn and the emotional range of a campaign mailer written entirely in bold. Their grievance is simple: twenty-one Indiana Republican state senators voted against a congressional map President Donald Trump wanted, and as a result, Indiana remains 7–2 instead of the allegedly holier 9–0.

Apparently, 78 percent Republican control is now considered a rounding error.

As Abdul points out, there’s nothing wrong with primaries. “If Republican voters want to replace incumbents over redistricting strategy, that’s their call. Parties have internal debates all the time…But this isn’t just a debate about maps. It’s about discipline… about turning every procedural disagreement into a loyalty test.”

As he notes, in Indiana politics, there’s apparently no shortage of hunting licenses.

If you want some excellent snark in which to marinate your daily political depression, subscribe to both of them.

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Good Stuff Is Happening Too

There’s a reason “doom scrolling” has entered our vocabularies. Every day, the news is filled with incomprehensibly stupid and damaging activities of Trump and his collection of clowns, creeps, weirdos and incompetents; it’s easy to become fixated on all the chaos and destruction.

But there are encouraging signs that We the People are rapidly awakening from our civic slumber. Some examples, in no particular order: 

A Grand Jury has refused to indict two Senators (including former astronaut Mark Kelly) and four Congresspersons who’d filmed a video in which they reminded members of the armed forces that they have a legal duty to refuse illegal orders. It’s an axiom in the legal community that prosecutors can get grand juries to indict a ham sandwich, but this recent–and entirely appropriate–result follows several others in which panels of ordinary American citizens have refused to go along with bogus charges lodged against people targeted by Trumpian pique.

Despite early incidents in which institutions of higher education have “bent the knee,” universities have begun pushing back. In Red Indiana, where the current President of Indiana University has cozied up to our MAGA governor and complied with the administration’s various assaults on academic freedom, the faculty has passed a resolution urging IU to remove the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, along with its Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agencies, from the university’s list of approved employers who are allowed to advertise jobs on the IU Events calendar.  

The House of Representatives defied Trump for once, voting 217-214 against a rule that would have blocked members from voting on the president’s tariffs. The defeat means that members will be able to force up or down votes on the President’s insane, damaging global trade agenda. (The Senate had already voted against Trump’s tariffs with GOP senators siding with Democrats last year.)

ICE is leaving Minneapolis. Trump is steadily losing support on his signature issue of immigration. An NBC/SurveyMonkey poll found 49% of American adults strongly disapprove of the Trump administration’s handling of border security and immigration, compared with 34% who strongly disapproved in a similar poll last April.

An essay titled “Auspicious Omens and Excellent Insubordination” contains a lengthy list of other evidence that the resistance is making progress, and that an administration described as “weak, chaotic, and wildly unpopular” is continuing to do everything it can to make itself more so. 

There are also the slow-moving but inexorable revelations from the Epstein files, which–in addition to a reported million mentions of Trump–have ensnared people like Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and debunked Trump’s assertions that he hadn’t known about Epstein’s sexual crimes. As the essay suggests, the continuing dribble of releases, along with the obvious efforts to suppress information about “who is being protected (powerful men) and who is not (abused children)” keeps fanning the flames.

The unhinged and increasingly overt racism that led Trump to portray the Obamas as apes has generated a backlash even among Republicans. As the author notes, Trump fails to understand “that we live in a world where causes have effects.” In this case, one effect was that thousands of people praised the Obamas as gracious, dignified, and beautiful while accurately describing Trump as gross, demented and repulsive.

J.D. Vance continues to be booed–in Vermont, at the Olympics…Trump skipped the Super Bowl because his staff warned that he too would be booed. (And despite his dissing of Bad Bunny, the Super Bowl halftime show was the most widely watched in history.)

Republicans see a bloodbath coming in the midterms, which the Trumpists are already frantically trying delegitimize–a clear sign they don’t think they can win fairly. Democrats have overperformed in every special election held in 2025. Most recently, a Democrat who was outspent by twenty to one won a state senate election in Texas by 14 points–in a district Trump had won by 17 points–a 31-point shift. (A GOP operative was quoted saying, “We watered down red districts to steal blue ones, and now the electorate hates us and our turnout is collapsing.”)

High school students across the country are staging walkouts to protest ICE–and the audience at a wrestling match shouted “Fuck ICE” before the main event.

And authentic Christians have finally been showing up to oppose the psuedo-Christian nationalists. The Catholic church is speaking out for immigrants, and so are Episcopalians, Methodists, and the United Church of Christ– along with rabbis, imams, and Buddhist monks. Across the country, churches are becoming meeting places, training grounds, and organizing networks for immigrant solidarity work.

There’s much more. MAGA has lost more than Marjorie Taylor Greene. It’s lost We the (Real American) People.

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Preaching To The Choir

One of the regular writers who posts at Lincoln Square is a political science professor named Kristoffer Ealy. I’ve cited him before, because I have found his posts particularly perceptive, and a recent one especially so. 

The post is lengthy, and primarily focuses on the issue of celebrity endorsements–when they help and when they don’t. (As Ealy says, he’s done his research–not “research” like the MAGA vaccine “experts” “who’ve watched three YouTube videos, misread a Facebook meme, and now think they’re qualified to run the FDA.”) If that is a subject that interests you, his observations are well worth clicking through and reading.

But along with the discourse on proper deployment of celebrities and their endorsements, one observation really caught my attention and made me feel much better about this daily blog, which–as I have long understood–is an exercise in “preaching to the choir.” (Aside from a couple of intermittent trolls, virtually everyone who visits here is anti-MAGA and horrified by Trump. I haven’t changed anyone’s mind; I may at best have amplified the reasons for our common angst and anger.)

Ely writes:

My friend Reecie Colbert’s line belongs in marble: don’t underestimate preaching to the choir, because the choir sings.

People throw around “preaching to the choir” like it’s meaningless, like the only thing that matters is converting some mythical swing voter who spends weekends reading white papers and sipping tea. That is not how elections are won. Elections are won by the people who already agree with you actually showing up. The choir is not dead weight. The choir is infrastructure. The choir is the group chat that becomes a phone bank. The choir is the “did you vote yet?” text at 7:12 p.m. The choir is the auntie who makes sure everyone in the family is registered. The choir is the volunteer who knocks doors even when it’s hot and everybody’s mad and the vibes are rancid. The choir is the person who drives someone to the polls. The choir is the person curing ballots and checking signatures and doing the unglamorous democracy maintenance that never trends. (Emphasis mine…for obvious reasons.)

Ealy is absolutely correct to say that the most important job of a campaign is to energize the choir and increase its volume–to turn passive agreement into action. And as he points out, the real problem in politics is not persuasion, but behavioral follow-through.

People say they support you and then they don’t vote. They say they care and then they don’t register. They say they’re outraged and then they don’t show up because it’s raining. The gap between attitude and behavior is where elections go to die.

This blog speaks to commenters –and the “lurkers” I frequently encounter– about matters upon which we largely agree.

I have assumed that my writing and posting here is an extension of my twenty-one years in a university classroom: to explain, to interpret, to share information that many readers are unlikely to have encountered. Ealy disagrees. He says the purpose of preaching to the choir is to motivate concrete behavior.

Just as pastors and rabbis and Imams exhort their “audiences”/parishioners to act in conformity to their religious tenets, the job of those of us who “preach” politically is to turn opinion into action.

I pondered that insight.

There is research suggesting that people who make a public vow to take a specified action are more likely to follow through. Accordingly, I would be very appreciative if those of you who read these daily rants and agree with the need to reclaim the America we thought we inhabited would make some sort of public commitment–in a comment here, or on Facebook or Bluesky, Threads, or some other place or platform. Confirm your intent to vote, to attend protests, to register or transport voters, send postcards, volunteer for a campaign…whatever it is that you are prepared to do.

A flood of such public promises to turn opinion into action and increase the choir’s singing volume– would both confirm Ealy’s observations and make me feel much less useless….

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