Category Archives: Random Blogging

Why We Must Resist

In a recent newsletter, Simon Rosenberg summed it all up.

First, let’s talk about Trump. That he is a wrecking ball, in clear physical and cognitive decline, and a wanna be dictator – not a President – has become impossible to ignore. In just a few months he has re-ignited inflation, slowed the economy, exploded the deficit, torched our alliances and damaged America’s standing throughout world. He is wrecking our health care system, attacking our world leading scientific and medical research centers, laying siege to the farm economy, throwing innocent people into foreign gulags without due process, invading our cities, recklessly walking away from the global consensus on climate change, leading an extraordinary coverup of a prolific sex trafficker and pedophile, enriching himself and his courtiers, and is now using the government to lawlessly pursue and silence his domestic opposition.

America under Trump has become less prosperous, less safe, less healthy, and less free, a far weaker nation. His regime represents a profound and historic betrayal of America and everything that has made us great, and the most powerful nation in history. All of this has also made him extraordinarily unpopular as the American people wake up to the destruction he is causing, wake up to that he really is pursuing an agenda of “more for me, less for you” now.

For sentient Americans, that summary is impossible to rebut. The obvious question, however, is: what can genuine patriots do about it? How can ordinary citizens who are horrified by the daily news (much of which might be introduced under the heading “what fresh hell is this?”) resist? More to the point, how can we come together to create a mass resistance movement?

I wish I had a snappy answer to that question. I don’t. But I do believe that massive participation in the upcoming No Kings protests will be essential. We need to turn out many millions of Americans who are ready and willing to send a. message of non-compliance, who publicly reject the lawlessness and the utter stupidity of the bigots who currently control the government–and not just in Washington, but in Red state capitols like Indianapolis.

Survey research tells us two things: one hopeful, one depressing. It’s hopeful that polling uniformly shows that a majority of Americans loath Trump and oppose virtually everything his administration is doing. It’s depressing that the minority is so large–depending upon the poll, somewhere between 37% and 42% of us still approve of him.

It’s hard for me to get my head around the fact that so many of our neighbors are perfectly willing to support a lawless and increasingly vicious regime, willing to ignore or excuse or even support the reality of the summary with which I opened this post. Many of them, no doubt, are unaware of much of it–they live in bubbles, getting their “information” from Fox and multiple other propaganda sites. To the extent that they are aware, they are evidently supportive of what they see as an exchange of constitutional civic equality for the White Christian male dominance they would prefer.

Historians tell us that the effort to turn America into a Christian theocracy–an effort summarized and documented in Project 2025– began decades ago. Normal Americans have largely been unaware of that effort as they’ve gone about their daily lives.  It’s understandable that the majority are only now waking to the magnitude of the threat. (The pace of that recognition has actually been abetted by the sheer buffoonery and incompetence of the Trump administration.) 

There are a number of signs, large and small, that the majority is finding its voice: the increasing number of spontaneous protests; the huge Jimmy Kimmel response; the efforts by lower court judges to hold the constitutional line and protect the rule of law… and the fact that Amazon is selling lots of pre-made protest signs, suggesting there’s a substantial market.

In the future, it may be necessary to mount massive boycotts of the companies bending the knee to our wanna-be autocrats. It may be necessary to participate in a national strike, or take other measures to resist the destruction of the America most of us love. But right now, No Kings Day is our vehicle, and we need to ensure that it demonstrates an enormous resistance by millions of citizens ready, willing and able to retake our country.

See you on OCTOBER 18TH.

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Teams Versus Tribes

I generally hate sports metaphors, but sometimes they are too apt to ignore, so bear with me…

I recently had a conversation with a friend who–like me–remembered the “old” days of politics, when Republicans and Democrats differed on some issues and agreed on others, and when those conversations and debates were about policy.

When I served in Indianapolis’ City Hall (I know, a zillion years ago), city leaders often met with the state legislators elected from Indianapolis. Some were Republican, some Democrat, and while they reflected the priorities of their opposing caucuses on most issues, they frequently came together to support the priorities of the city. They worked with the Mayor on initiatives that would be good for Indianapolis.

Back in that day, Republicans and Democrats were two teams. The thing about teams is that they are playing the same game and obeying the same rules. That political “game” was governing, and the goal was to score policies that benefited your constituency. (Yes, both teams had players who were all about themselves, or in the pocket of some moneyed interest, or embarrassingly dumb, but those were the exceptions. The majority really did care about legislating policies they believed were sound, even if they disagreed about what those policies were.)

Those days are over.

Over the intervening years, the “Red team”–the Republican team I played on back then–has morphed into a tribal cult. Its more liberal, moderate and thoughtful members have been ejected, leaving virtually everyone unwilling to accept the new tribal identity without a team. Some of us became Democrats, others, disenfranchised Independents.

The problem with that change from teams to tribes should be obvious. While teams are competing to win the same game, tribes aren’t interested in either competition or the game–instead, they are intent upon clearing the playing field of those despised “others.” Rather than engaging in policy debates–the “game”–or concerning themselves with issues of governance, they are focused on defeating those not in their. tribe. They are intent upon establishing dominance.

In other words, today’s tribal folks aren’t interested in governing or in the relative merits of policy A or B–their goal is much simpler: to own the “libruls” and put those uppity Blacks, women and gays back in their proper, submissive place.

Historically, tribal bonds were crucial for survival. Membership in a tribe offered deep psychological and social connections, and contributed to  human well-being and achievement. However, as we are seeing, the persistence of strong group loyalties based upon identity can foster extreme attitudes, undermine democratic principles, and inculcate an “us versus them” worldview that is deeply corrosive. When tribes are based upon racial and religious homogeneity, rather than common values and aspirations, there is no middle ground.

So here we are.

The White “Christian” Nationalist tribe that has “evolved” from the once-respectable GOP is uninterested in anything but regaining social and political dominance. They are unconcerned with the Trump administration’s destruction of our federal government and its flouting of the constitutional rules of the game and unperturbed by Trump’s embarrassing and damaging international antics– because governing in the national interest isn’t the “game” they’re playing. The tribe believes that making America “great” means putting them in charge.

It’s no wonder the Democrats are at odds over how to proceed in this new environment. Most Democratic politicians still think of themselves as members of a team that is concerned first and foremost with matters of public policy, and they’re ill-equipped to face opponents whose “policy” preferences are limited to eradicating opponents and establishing White “Christian” Nationalist dominance.

I have no idea how we extricate the country from this mismatch. If this sports analogy is right, pious exhortations to find “common ground” are unrealistic, to put it mildly. Americans will simply have to choose between the team and the tribe.

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Data? What Data?

It’s bad enough that a substantial percentage of our fellow Americans reject probative evidence that is inconsistent with their preferred realities. What is arguably worse is the administration’s effort to erase such evidence–its conduct of a war on data that might undercut Trump’s fantasy realities.

The New Republic recently focused on that war.

Trump has always made things up. Remember that he entered politics promoting the hoax that Obama wasn’t born in the United States. But what’s new about Trump’s second presidency is that not only have his lies escalated in dimension and scope, becoming increasingly brazen and weird—London is under sharia law!—but he’s also waging a concerted all-out war on facts that contradict his narrative, which is to say, all reliable sources of data.

As the article notes–and as most academics know–for many years, the government has been one of the best sources of data available; not only has it been an important source of probative, vetted information, it has made that information easily accessible to journalists and citizenry alike.  That informational history is under attack by Trump, who–as the article notes– doesn’t want any facts to get in the way of his made-up stories.

To declare that Trump has been right and the scientists have been wrong about climate change is so counterfactual that it requires a massive suppression of available data. Good thing Trump has thought of that. Through a combination of layoffs and weird directives, his administration has dramatically reduced its ability to collect data on industrial pollution that causes climate change, extreme weather caused by climate change, greenhouse gases contributing to climate change—really any facts related to the climate crisis. To take just one example, an effort launched by the Biden administration to collect emissions data was canceled by Trump on his first day in office. The same could be said about his Tylenol claims; lucky for him he has made significant cuts to autism research.

What about the autism claims unsupported by any credible medical research? Or the wild and dangerous claims from Trump and RFK Jr. about vaccines? As the article points out, those vaccine claims will be insufficiently challenged since he has cut vaccine research by more than half a billion dollars.

It goes on. And on.

Trump’s commitment to falsehood—and to eradicating facts at their roots—is not limited to science and public health. This summer he claimed that his policies were leading America into “another golden age” and that economic growth under his presidency “shatters expectations.” The data said otherwise: Whether you’re talking about job growth, inflation, or just about any other measure, the numbers did not chart in a direction favorable to the president. Here again, Trump is not willing to tolerate the facts: When the Bureau of Labor Statistics last month reported numbers that contradicted his sunny narrative, he fired the head of the agency.

Trump constantly says bizarre and unsupportedd things about crime–at least, in cities run by Democrats. He claims violence is surging although it’s  decreasing, actually, in some places, at historic rates,  He constantly blames immigrants, although relatively little crime is committed by immigrants, and he and MAGA are now trying to blame mass murders on transgender Americans, despite the fact that only 0.1 percent of mass shootings are committed by transgender people—and very few murders of any kind.

Are these and multiple other assertions inconsistent with the data? Well, there’s an easy “fix” to that–stop gathering and reporting the data.

Trump’s Agriculture Department cut its annual food insecurity survey, so Americans won’t know how many people are going hungry as a result of Trump’s cuts to food stamps and his inflationary tariffs.

We also won’t know how children are doing in school after his massive cuts to K-12 education, since the administration gutted the Department of Education’s research offices and the National Center for Education Statistics.

States, universities, and other nonprofits are trying to make up for the loss of the data, but in many cases the information provided by the federal government was irreplaceable.

When every day brings a new assault on our constitution and the rule of law, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that data, research, and facts are dangers to authoritarian regimes. Trump doesn’t know much, but he does understand that “data provides the basis for arguments, and he does not want any arguments. He also understands that facts and knowledge can only be nourished and sustained by institutions and experts, so he is destroying those institutions and pink-slipping those experts.”

If and when we rid ourselves of Trump and the MAGA plague, rebuilding and restoration will take many years…..

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An Interview Worth Your Time

Mark Elias of the Democracy Docket recently interviewed Rick Wilson, the Never Trumper who established the Lincoln Project. The transcript of that interview (linked) is lengthy, but it really is worth your time to read in its entirety. If you haven’t that time, or the inclination, I’ll focus on some highlights.

Wilson defected from the GOP when he realized the party had gaslighted him.

All of us jaded, cynical consultants were actually the guys who really believed everything we said, like the Constitution, the rule of law, personal responsibility, and integrity. The rest of the party was like, whatever comes next that gets us to the next job, we’re going to be with it. And then Trump was that. I just decided I wasn’t going to be a part of it.

He also understands something that far too many progressives do not–that you can’t have a policy debate with a man who is totally uninterested in issues–and you can’t argue policy in a GOP that lives in its own preferred ‘reality.”

I think two things happened to the Republican Party. The first was the emergence of a separate populist conservative subculture. It came out of talk radio, and it came out of right-wing media on Fox and elsewhere. It came out of the rise of social media where people were suddenly able to pick and choose the news they got, pick and choose the world they wanted to have represented to them. Politicians suddenly realized in the Republican party that the incentive structure was to go further out, to be crazier. To raise money, you needed to be the guy who was on Fox. To be on Fox, you had to be the guy who was the crazy guy. And they’re on a hamster wheel of that. So the perverse incentive structure inside the party was the opening act of it.

Wilson notes that most Democrats don’t understand how to debate someone who is not motivated by ideas or policy preferences, and he criticises  Democrats who tend to enter the political debate by saying something like  “Check out page 74 of my climate change plan, and then you’ll be convinced.”

In what may be his most significant observation, Wilson attributes the solidity of the Republican base to the fact that “it’s not a political party anymore. It’s a cultural movement, and it wraps up nationalism, populism, fascist adjacency, white nationalism. It’s a culture, and it’s hard to convince somebody in a culture to change that culture over a policy.

Even though the things that the Republican party has done to working-class voters in the last 12 years has been horrific, and as an ex-Republican, I can tell you that it’s horrific, they still believe that the cultural thing — and that’s God, that’s guns, that’s gay rights stuff — that an awful lot of this country that are not in coastal cities, that are not college graduates, that are not folks who are politically tuned into MSNBC or CNN or Fox every day, they feel like the culture around them is changing in a way they don’t like.

Trump offered them an easy solution: “I’ll be the enemy of your enemy. I’ll hurt the people you want to hurt. I’ll hurt the people you think are hurting you.” And that offer, that deal that he made, was a culture deal. You’re seeing them play it out right now with the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk killing. You’re seeing them play it out in the censorship regime they’re trying to impose because a lot of the things in that culture, they are connected only to the branding of America, not to the reality. They don’t believe in a pluralistic republic based on democratic principles. They believe in a Christian nation. They believe in a nation where authority figures like Trump have power because that will make it easier to hurt the people they don’t like.

The interview also contained some hopeful observations.

Donald Trump is so much weaker than you think. He is right now 26 points underwater on inflation and prices….  right now, the economy is unspinnably bad for a lot of his voters. When you go into the grocery store or Target or Walmart or the gas station, prices are not down, and you can’t spin that away….

His polling numbers right now are so far below where they were in the first term, and they’re so far below where Biden’s numbers were at this time in the beginning of his term, where we had roaring inflation. We’re going to go into 2026, unless there’s some unforeseen economic miracle, with an economy that’s dragging on Donald Trump pretty badly. An economy that is saying, “Okay, we tried your tariff game, it didn’t work.” And all these Republicans who backed Trump on this do not have the immunity that Trump has from reality with his voters…

The laws of political gravity still apply down the ballot. So we’re going to go in with an environment where a change election is in the wind. And a change election means that it’s not going to be, as the DCCC thinks, we’re going to fight it out over six or seven seats… We’re going to fight it out over 25 or 30 seats if Trump’s numbers continue to remain so low… He is an unpopular president, and the Republicans have defined themselves by only one thing: being Trump’s guys. They don’t represent people in a district anymore. They’re just Donald Trump’s representative from the fourth congressional district of Missouri or whatever…

He’s a boat anchor right now in terms of ratings and politics. The big bad bill is having very nasty impacts out there on rural hospitals. People are getting how bad it is. We’re in the middle of a real estate collapse in about seven or eight Sunbelt states right now, which we’re pretending it’s not happening … across the deep south in the Sunbelt, we’re about to have a real estate collapse. That is a very bad political outcome for Trump. A lot of these Republicans are also still trying to sell immigration as a net win, but it’s also destroying our agriculture system around the country and raising food prices. There are all the components here for a Democratic sweep of the House.

You really need to read the whole thing, or you can watch the full interview here.

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Let’s Talk About Anti-Semitism

I think it’s time to address the subject of anti-Semitism–and to distinguish it from opposition to Israeli activities.

It is entirely possible to be horrified by Bibi Netanyahu and the Israeli war in Gaza–to consider what Israel is doing there to be indistinguishable from genocide–and not to be even slightly anti-Semitic. (Indeed, a significant percentage of American Jews fall into that horrified category, including this one.) But that negative opinion slides over into anti-Semitism when people attribute actions taken by Israel to “the Jews.”

A recent book review in the New Yorker began with a reminder of the long history of the anti-Jewish animus we see re-emerging.

Exactly who the Jews are—often a fraught question—has rarely been a mystery to their enemies. Stalin cast them as “rootless cosmopolitans” colluding with “American imperialists” to undermine the Soviet Union. In Hitler’s fevered imagination, they were bacilli infecting the healthy “Aryan” race. They have been denounced as lecherous predators and as omnipotent conspirators, as arch-Bolsheviks and arch-capitalists. Increasingly, these days, “Jew” is conflated with “Zionist,” which, as a term of opprobrium, can mean anything from “settler colonialist” to “fascist” to “racist.” The older sense of Zionism—establishing a Jewish state to shield Jews from persecution—has largely slipped from view.

The article reminded readers why the Trump administration’s pretense that its assault on universities is an effort to eradicate anti-Semitism is so ludicrous: among other things, Trump has dined with outspoken Holocaust deniers, and famously said that neo-Nazi marchers chanting “Jews shall not replace us” included “some very fine people.” As the article noted, claims by a hard-right government full of blood-and-soil nationalists that it is a protector of Jews ought to strike us as very peculiar.

It is important to note that the administration’s own clear anti-Semitism is only one aspect of its increasingly open animus toward anyone and everyone that White Christian Nationalist males consider “other”–Jews, Muslims, Black and Brown folks, women, immigrants. Trump’s MAGA base is primarily composed of those who find living in a multi-ethnic, multi-racial society intolerable. Trump and MAGA intentionally encourage those bigotries, and in the process, blur the lines between acceptable criticism and broad condemnations of whole categories of people.

The New Yorker was reviewing Mark Mazower’s recent and timely book “On Antisemitism,” which it noted is an effort “to restore historical context to a word that has become a generic term of condemnation.” As the article pointed out, labeling all critics of Israel as anti-Semites is no different from the critics who assume that all Jews are Zionists and believe all Zionists are racists.

I think that observation captures the essential anti-Americanism of all bigotries, whether of Left or Right. In our system–aspirational as American philosophy has admittedly been–people are treated as individuals. As I’ve previously written, in the American constitutional perspective, so long as you obey the laws, pay your taxes and refrain from harming others, you are entitled to be considered an equal member of the polity. Your skin color, gender, religion and other group affiliations are legally and civically irrelevant.

Bigotry rejects individuality. It ascribes certain “essential characteristics” to entire groups of people, based upon their identities. So we have the historic slurs of Blacks as lazy, Jews as “sharp,” women as emotional, gay men as sissies, and so forth–as if our human variety doesn’t exist.

I want to reiterate–there is nothing more anti-American than that intellectually-lazy approach to our fellow humans.

Are there greedy Jews? Lazy Black folks? Emotional women? Sure. And there are greedy, lazy, emotional White Christians. There are also wonderful, caring, productive people in every category. There are no traits–positive or negative–that inhere in every member of every human tribe.

One of the aspects of American history that the Trumpers want to obscure is the enormous damage done by these racist tropes–damage that the DEI programs they detest were established to counter.

When people who are being criticised for some behavior or other, it is rarely appropriate to attach their group identities to those criticisms. That crime wasn’t committed by “a Black.” A particular man was responsible. The Twin Towers weren’t attacked by “the Muslims.” They were targeted by a subset of Jihadists. “The Jews” aren’t committing war crimes in Gaza; the government of Israel is–and the broader Jewish community isn’t responsible for the Jews being singled out on social media and in comments to this blog as supporting that government.

In the United States, our rights and responsibilities are individual. Because we are.

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