Category Archives: Random Blogging

Food For Thought…

As regular readers of this blog know, one of my sons lives in Amsterdam, and works at a company that (forgive me) does “internet stuff.” (My son has explained his job to me multiple times, but I am the product of a pre-internet age, and couldn’t describe what he does if my life depended upon it…)

Thanks to that same mysterious Internet, we can and do Face Time frequently, and we recently had a conversation that I have subsequently been mulling over. He had just returned from Kigali, Rwanda, where he had made a presentation at a conference, and while he was there, he’d visited a museum dedicated to the history of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide. The remains of over 250,000 people are interred in that memorial, which is dedicated to telling the story of the events leading up to the genocide against the Tutsi.

That genocide took place over a span of around 100 days, during which members of the Tutsi ethnic group were systematically killed by Hutu militias. Most scholars estimate that somewhere between 500,000 and 662,000 Tutsi died. Wikipedia notes that the genocide was “marked by extreme violence, with victims often murdered by neighbours, and widespread sexual violence, with between 250,000 and 500,000 cases of rape.”

Reports note that the horrific violence was rooted in “long-standing ethnic tensions.” My son reported that the museum had focused on those tensions, and especially upon the longtime dehumanization of the Tutsis, and that exhibits emphasized that the same process of dehumanization has preceded and characterized virtually all other genocides, including–but by no means limited to–the Nazi holocaust.

Our conversation then–understandably– pivoted to the reality of America’s long history of racism and the Trump administration and MAGA’s increasing use of, and effort to normalize, similarly dehumanizing language.

The administration has repeatedly used the phrase “Poisoning the blood of our country” to describe non-White undocumented immigrants. Trump himself has called migrants “animals,” accused them of spreading “bad genes,” and described undocumented families as “infesting” the nation–language that echoes Nazi rhetoric against the Jews. He has called political opponents “vermin” and people who crossed the border illegally “animals.” The use of such dehumanizing language has steadily moved from Trump’s early rally speeches into DHS/White House institutional accounts, where White supremacist tropes and viral memes increasingly posted on official government social media accounts appear to be an effort to redefine who “belongs” in the United States and who should be considered an “invader.” Other.

After that conversation, I visited several internet sites devoted to analyses of genocides and the conditions that produce them. One of them, Genocide Watch, listed the ten stages leading up to bloodshed: Classification, Symbolization, Discrimination, Dehumanization, Organization, Polarization, Preparation, Persecution, Extermination, and Denial.

The site explains that

Genocide is a process that develops in ten stages that are predictable but not inexorable. At each stage, preventive measures can stop it. The process is not linear. Stages occur simultaneously. Each stage is itself a process. Their logic is similar to a nested Russian matryoshka doll. Classification is at the center. Without it the processes around it could not occur. As societies develop more and more genocidal processes, they get nearer to genocide.  But all stages continue to operate throughout the process.

As Genocide Watch notes, all cultures have categories to distinguish between “us and them.” Some of those distinctions are racial, some ethnic or religious. (Examples were Germans and Jews, Hutus and Tutsis.) One of most important classifications used to differentiate “us” from “them” in what the site identified as “our current nation-state system” is citizenship–and as the site emphasizes, “Removal or denial of a group’s citizenship is a legal way to deny the group’s civil and human rights.”

It starts with “Us versus Them” and “Those people.” It devolves into “vermin” and “animals” and  “invaders” and other epithets that effectively remove the “people” descriptor, which is what “dehumanization” does.

Ever since that conversation with my son, I have wondered where America is in that process, and whether a country founded on the (unrealized) principle that all people are equal will allow the worst among us to redefine who counts as “people.”

I am very much afraid we’re farther down that road than most of us want to recognize.

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Politicization Matters

Trump and the members of his administration are a disaster, but they aren’t the only ones. We are now seeing what happens when we elect Senators and Representatives whose entire allegiance is to their tribe and its leadership rather than the people they are elected to serve.

True, the negative consequences of what I am calling “politicization” are intensified by the Trump’s insanity–which is becoming more obvious every day. (He recently responded to questions about the bond market by threatening military intervention. If that doesn’t convince you, listen to this…) When Joe Biden began displaying the ravages of age, both his essential mental soundness and the competent and well-meaning administration he’d assembled made that decline far less worrisome than the precipitous decline of a man-child whose ignorance, serious mental issues, and thirst for revenge on anyone and everyone who ever thwarted his greed or ridiculed his tacky grandiosity were longstanding.

As Trump loses what is left of his already-disordered mind, that thirst for revenge, that desire to lash out and punish anyone who opposes him has been (as we say in academic-speak) operationalized. Federal officials have admitted withholding grants  from Blue states for no other reason than that they would be spent in states that had voted against Trump.

And now, in the wake of the fierce weather that has battered large parts of the country, the administration is placing political conditions on disaster aid. Salem, Oregon just won a lawsuit against Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and FEMA in which the city charged the Trump administration of “dangling disaster aid above local leaders’ heads in exchange for a rejection of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.”

The Judge in that case found that “As wildfires, severe storms, and floods routinely ravage through the State of Oregon, disaster relief has become a tool to advance unrelated executive policy.… It is hard to imagine the connection between the use of preferred pronouns and the fires currently burning through central Oregon.”

It isn’t just Oregon. The New Republic previously reported

The White House has admitted in court that it deliberately canceled federal grants to states that didn’t vote for President Trump.

In court documents filed last week, and first reported on by The New York Times, Trump administration officials confirmed they terminated $7.5 billion in clean energy grants in October “based solely” on political criteria, focusing on states with Democratic leadership that voted for Kamala Harris in 2024. The admission came in a lawsuit filed by California researchers challenging the cancellation of Biden-era funding in multiple federal agencies.

As multiple reports have noted, Trump has been withholding disaster relief funds from American citizens who happen to live in states that recognize that (gasp!) trans people exist or that teach about racism in their public schools. Last month, he denied FEMA disaster aid requests from four blue states after accepting the aid requests of six red states just two days before.

Here in Red Indiana, where our MAGA governor has asked for federal aid in the wake of devastating storms that have flooded much of the state, we will probably get the assistance that–by law–should be made available on the basis of need, not politics. (Even Hoosiers in Blue cities will benefit, which raises the question: don’t the morons in the Trump administration understand or care that there are lots of Red folks–Trump voters–in the Blue states they are declining to help?)

Pointing out that this behavior is illegal is beside the point. This is an administration that routinely ignores both the spirit and the letter of the law. More recently, it has been ignoring court rulings as well. As the Guardian has reported,

During Donald Trump’s second term, federal judges and legal analysts have accused the administration of an unprecedented pattern of noncompliance, finding that officials violated or sidestepped court orders in at least 31 major lawsuits and over 250 individual immigration cases covering deportations, spending cuts, and policy rollbacks….

 The Republican administration’s power struggle with federal courts, which is testing basic tenets of US democracy, reflects an expansive view of executive authority that has also challenged the independence of federal agencies, a president’s ethical obligations and the US’s role in the international order.

The unanswered question is whether the millions of apathetic Americans who didn’t bother to vote in 2024, not to mention the millions who cast ballots for a profoundly unfit White man because they were unwilling to elect a Black woman, have learned anything from the disaster we now inhabit.

I guess the results in November will answer that question.

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Rich Man, Richer Man..

One of the most trenchant commentators on America’s current disaster of an administration is former Labor Secretary Robert Reich. Reich’s tenure made him widely admired; in 2008, Time named him one of the Ten Most Effective Cabinet Members of the century, and in that same year The Wall Street Journal –not noted for its liberal bona fides–placed him sixth on its list of Most Influential Business Thinkers. He has taught at Harvard, Brandeis and Berkley.

Reich posts opinion pieces regularly, and they are all worth reading and considering. A recent one focused upon just who is “raking it in” as America’s national debt explodes. Much of that explosion, Reich tells us, is the result of the billions of dollars in lost revenue from Trump’s invalidated tariffs, and the effect of Trump’s tax cuts to big corporations and the already very wealthy. And then, of course, there are the soaring costs of Trump’s war.

Reich reassures readers that crossing the forty-trillion-dollar threshold doesn’t mean a depression is looming. But he focuses in on what we can only describe as the actual– and very troubling– effects of that debt.

The problem is that an increasing portion of our nation’s budget — and your tax dollar — is dedicated to paying interest on this growing debt. Annual net interest payments on the federal debt have surpassed $1 trillion, making servicing the debt one of the largest of all federal budget expenditures.

That’s money we don’t spend on schools, healthcare, roads and bridges, and social safety nets. We’ll soon be paying more in interest on the federal debt each year than we spend annually on Medicare.

Reich then explains something that is not widely understood–the identity of those who benefit from those interest payments.

This is an issue you hear very little discussion about, because the wealthy and powerful of this country would rather you not know. (And don’t expect Trump suck-up Bessent to tell you, because he’s too busy denying that economic inequality is worsening.)

Foreign governments and foreign investors hold only about 30 percent of our debt. The rest — roughly 70 percent — is held domestically. That is, we pay the interest to ourselves.

And who, exactly, are the “ourselves” we are paying? Reich tells us that by far the largest amount–nearly half–“is held by mutual funds, pension funds, insurance companies, and banks.”

And who owns those funds, companies and banks? Who holds the Treasury bills that are generating the growing amount of interest the rest of us are paying on the ballooning national debt?

People at the top. Rich people.

Reich spells it out.

The richest 1 percent of U.S. households hold about 35.6 percent of all financial assets — shares of stock, corporate bonds, and Treasury bills — so it’s safe to assume they hold at least a third of all Treasury bills.

Here’s where things get really interesting.

Decades ago, wealthy Americans financed the federal government mainly by paying taxes. Their tax rate was far higher than it is today.

In the 1950s, under President Dwight Eisenhower, the richest Americans paid a marginal tax rate of 91 percent. (Tax deductions and tax credits lowered this top effective marginal rate somewhat.)

Today, the tax rate on wealthy Americans is far lower. The richest 400 Americans pay an average effective total tax rate of about 24 percent — including federal, state, local, and corporate taxes. Jeff Bezos — America’s second or third richest person — paid no federal income taxes in 2018. Trump paid no federal taxes for years before he became president.

So now, wealthy Americans finance the federal government mainly by lending it money and collecting interest payments on those loans.

So while the richest Americans are collecting those growing interest payments, the taxes they pay have reduced government revenues by $10.6 trillion, courtesy of the tax cuts bestowed by George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump. As Reich reminds us, since 2000, 65 percent of the benefits from those tax cuts have gone to the richest of Americans — 22 percent to the top 1 percent. As he sums up: “Decades ago, the wealthiest Americans financed the government by paying higher taxes. Now, the government pays wealthy Americans interest on a swelling debt, caused largely by lower taxes on wealthy Americans.”

The taxes on ordinary Americans increasingly go to pay wealthy Americans interest on those loans–rather that funding the government services everyone needs.

And that is the real problem with our enormous national debt.

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The Toast Is Burning…

A story my mother used to tell really sums up the state of the American experiment.

A young boy failed to talk. His parents took him to specialists, all of whom said he was normal, but still, he never spoke. Then one day, when he was nearly five, he looked up from the breakfast table and said “This toast is burned!” His mother was astonished. “Why haven’t you ever talked before?” “Well,” he responded, “Up till now, everything’s been okay.”

A lot of Americans who haven’t been “talking”—who haven’t been civically engaged, who haven’t bothered to vote, who’ve been quiet because from their standpoint, everything was going along okay—have suddenly realized the toast is burned. Now, they want to talk, but they aren’t sure who to talk to, or how to frame their concerns.

In less than three months, America will hold a truly momentous election. The result will depend upon the degree to which a majority of us understand how badly the toast is being burnt–the degree to which a rogue Court and a greedy and criminal administration are destroying what I have called “the American Idea.”

The coming election will not pit Republicans against Democrats. As a good friend of mine–a man who spent several years as a high-ranking elected Republican–likes to say, the Republican Party we used to know no longer exists. It has been replaced by a cult that has hijacked the name.

The coming election will also not be a contest between Democratic Socialists and so-called “mainstream” Democrats. We simply do not have the time or bandwidth for Democrats’ usual circular firing squad.

There are a number of things that the coming election is not. It’s not a referendum on the fewer than 1% of trans girls playing sports on women’s teams. It isn’t a referendum on whatever “woke” is thought to mean these days. Given the profligate spending of the Trump administration, it won’t involve different approaches to fiscal responsibility. In fact, the coming election will be almost entirely devoid of policy argumentation.

Instead, it will determine the continued existence of the America in which most of us grew up.

We will go to the polls–hopefully in very large numbers–to decide whether this country will continue to pursue the two elements that have historically defined us: liberty and civic equality. (Note that I said “pursue,” because we have yet to perfect those elements, but they have always been the national goal.)

The Founders gave us a system that was intended to protect our “inalienable” rights. They didn’t believe those rights were granted by government; instead, they believed the proper function of the state was to protect those pre-existing human rights. When a government can decide who has rights and who doesn’t, rights become privileges to be awarded to those favored by a given administration.

The Fourteenth Amendment explicitly added civic equality to the Bill of Rights. In America, all of us have the right to be treated equally by a government bound to the rule of law. A government that privileges citizens of a particular race or religion is unAmerican.

Those are the fundamental American principles that are at stake this November.

American voters will decide whether to return to office the assortment of cultists, cowards and White “Christian” nationalists who have empowered the most corrupt and incompetent administration in American history–an administration that has wrecked the economy, damaged public health, diminished America’s global reputation and authority, trashed the “people’s house,” and rewarded its sycophants while engaging in a campaign of retribution against those who dare to stand against it–an administration that has trashed the nation’s Constitution, ignored the restraints of the Bill of Rights, and dared anyone to do anything about it.

This is an administration that believes itself to be a monarchy, headed by a profoundly ignorant, mentally-ill and increasingly senile malignant narcissist.

If the polls and surveys are right, some sixty percent of Americans know that the toast is burnt. If those Americans come out to vote, and if Trump’s efforts to suppress the vote fail, we can eject the administration’s fellow-travelers and begin what will be an arduous and lengthy process to recover our country, and repair the systemic inadequacies that facilitated this disaster.

Sixty percent is a majority, but there is something very wrong with America’s civic education when forty percent of us do not disapprove.

If the unAmerican forty percent turn out, and the sixty percent spend their time and energies squabbling with each other, we really could lose America.

This former Republican says Vote–and Vote Blue No Matter Who.

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Who’s The Extremist?

Among the (many) aspects of our political discourse that I find depressing, the substitution of insults and labels for actual analysis ranks high. Perhaps the most dishonest is the equation of Right and Left “extremism.” Recently, Talking Points Memo addressed that dishonesty with a column detailing just what is labeled “extreme” on both sides of the political aisle.

As the column pointed out, we live at a time when political labels are increasingly meaningless. We have fewer people identifying as “centrist” or “moderate,” and so-called independents espousing wildly incoherent views. (Donald Trump–who couldn’t define political terms if his life depended on it–has called Joe Biden a socialist, and it probably won’t be long until he changes that to his new favorite epithet, “communist.”)

As we’ve seen in this year’s primary contests, there’s also a maddening tendency among elected officials and the political press to equate “far left” and “far right” candidates as occupying equally extreme, dangerous ends of the political spectrum, though those in the former camp mostly want universal healthcare and affordable housing while the latter is more likely to endorse the forced deportation of non-white people from the United States.

While I am among those who considered several of Francesca Hong’s positions untenable (to be kind), I entirely agree with the University of Wisconsin professor who wrote that “The @nytimes hasn’t written a single article asking if ‘voters will think Tom Tiffany is too radical’ because he is an election-denying, pro-ICE, authoritarian extremist.”  When Hong lost, media headlines trumpeted “the Limits of the Left” and “a terminal failure of the far left.” None greeted Tiffany’s win with acknowledgment that it represented a victory for the far Right.

The article then described the policies proposed by candidates in both the “far Right” and “far Left camps.

On immigration, self-identified democratic socialists (arguably the farthest Left) are calling for free legal representation for immigrants and the abolition of ICE–positions that recent polling show 48% of Americans supporting. Georgia’s “mainstream” GOP Senate nominee sponsored the Laken Riley Act, (the first piece of legislation that Trump signed in his second term), an Act that targets undocumented immigrants charged with nonviolent crimes for deportation, and a bill to end birthright citizenship, which is inconveniently protected by the 14th Amendment.

When it comes to reproductive rights, Hong and other “far Left” candidates support reproductive rights; they also support universal childcare programs and paid leave programs to allow people to access reproductive care.  James Fishback of Florida’s GOP, along with most contemporary Republicans, insists that “life begins at conception and abortion is murder.” They would shut down any remaining abortion providers and replace them with crisis pregnancy centers. (To be fair, Fishback would establish paid maternity leave for those required to reproduce.)

When it comes to taxes, virtually all those in the Lefty camps want to raise taxes on billionaires and corporations in order to fund investments in housing, education, clean air & water, and healthcare. Some endorse a universal basic income. Republicans have a variety of approaches, but virtually all of them rob the poor to fund tax cuts for the rich.

In Michigan, El-Sayed’s opposition to funding Israel’s military was consistently labeled “far Left.” He also wants to end the war in Iran, along with the “warlike pathway that the foreign policy establishment has pursued with China”; to impose an arms embargo on Israel; to reinvest in foreign aid and re-engage with international bodies like the World Health Organization and the Paris Agreement. His basic argument is for “spending our taxpayer dollars here at home” rather than on funding foreign militaries.

Meanwhile, Bo French, a typical Republican nominee (in his case, for Texas Railroad Commissioner) wants to prohibit the sale of Texas land to people from Muslim-majority countries. He argues that “America has been at war with Islam since the time of our Independence, and stopping the subversive influence of Islam in Texas by banning all Muslim countries from acquiring land and interfering in Texas Oil and Gas will be my top legislative priority,” Shades of Indiana’s Micah Beckwith! (And speaking of Beckwith–and Rokita and Banks–you really can’t get any farther Right than those extremists without being a full-fledged Klansman.)

Credit where credit is due: the GOP has been successful in painting “extremism” as a Left phenomenon, despite the fact that even the most “out there” Leftists are far more representative of the majority of Americans than the increasingly neo-fascist Right.

I guess it all depends on how you define “extreme.”

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