Tom's Musings

We had a school shooting in Madison (my home town) the other day. A 15 year old girl killed a teacher and a fellow student, wounding 4 others (two critically) before ending her own life. There was the usual breast beating, the outpouring of thoughts and prayers. But no one even bothers to mention doing something about our insane gun laws and lack of regulations. That is a nonstarter.

It is not as if America never responds to public safety questions. Decades ago, a loose cannon poisoned a few bottles of aspirin and we have since been stuck with caps that are virtually impossible for old farts like me to open. One wanna-be terrorist tried to hide explosives in his shoes and we’ve been shedding our footwear at airport security ever since. On the other hand, this is the 83rd school shooting this year alone. And your garden variety mass shootings typically average one a day. In terms of gun violence, we are the total outlier among our peer nations … the carnage capital of the civilized world.

And don’t bring up the 2nd amendment. The wording is confusing. Many legal scholars interpret it as I do. The federal government cannot disband well regulated state militias. It says nothing about encouraging everyone to stock a small arsenal, including military-grade weapons. The Founding Fathers were concerned about centralized power and a large federal standing military. They hoped to sustain locally managed and organized defense structures. Well, the large federal military is with us to stay. I’m sure those writing our Constitution now would be aghast at the shooting gallery America has become.

The question for me is … why aren’t Americans outraged? Should not we be demanding action in Washington? Should we not be turning over every stone in an effort to find a solution. The old shibbeloth that guns save lives is ridiculous. Stranger on stranger homicides are relatively rare. The vast majority of gun-related deaths are self-inflicted (suicides) or shootings among people intimately involved with one another (domestic disputes). Yes, some will find alternative methods to kill either themselves or others (knives, poisons, explosives), but a handy firearm makes it so much easier to turn an immediate impulse into an irreversible tragedy.

This thought leads me to another conundrum. How could Americans vote for, never mind worship, the most disgusting public figure, at least in my lifetime. The Dems have been criticized for running a campaign that focused on Donald’s flaws, which were legion and undeniable.

I mean, really! The man is little more than an immature bully. He ridiculed a disabled reporter, gold star families (parents of deceased soldiers), military personnel in general, and a host of groups outside the White and Christian mainstream. He has demanded and assaulted scores of women, including under-age girls. He has a series of bankrupt business ventures, including schemes to defraud customers. His credit worthiness is so bad he had to appeal to Russian Oligarchs for loans. He has cozied up to heinous dictators, virtually revealing himself to be a Russian asset while undermining historic relations with our traditional allies. He cannot follow logical arguments, nor comprehend material above a 5th grade level which, not surprisingly, well captures his vocabulary and speaking skills. His command of public issues would have resulted in failing my introductory policy classes.

At another level, numerous mental health experts have opined that he is a pathological narcissist at the least, that he lacks impulse control, and that he routinely evidences immature, if not infantile, behaviors. Beyond those shortcoming, he routinely affirms a total lack of basic empathy, the minimal standard we assign to humans. If accurate, he well may be a dangerous sociopath, a psychopathy that might become particularly dangerous if he is not subject to ongoing supervision by actual adults. (Note: He had such individuals about him during his first term but he has studiously avoided them recently). And let us not touch upon his compulsive lying. All politicians engage in some distortions and sins of ommission. That is part of the game. Donald, however, lies so much, so egregiously, and so often that fact checkers lose count and interest. Being disingenuous may be all for effect, but one wonders about his ability to function in the real world. Can he distinguish fact from fiction?

Those are a few of his personal failings. More recently, he has engaged in troubling systemic failings. For example, he is surrounding himself with sycophants who constantly indulge his cruel fantasies for revenge on real and imagined enemies. He increasingly demands obsequious displays of overt fealty and lavish personal praise. A parade of notable persons from the private sector and media now bow down before him. Worse still, his appointees are, without exception, unsuitable for their positions. Despite what Republicans believe, government is important and performs critical functions. Would you ask a plumber or childcare worker to perform open heart surgery on you because you dont like the doctor’s politics. Moreover, there will be no one to rein in his ego or constrain his passions for unbridled power. The world is quaking at the very thought of the future where a child-like man can exert his infantile fantasies in ways that can have global consequences.

And yet, despite all this, America seems unperturbed. In a recent opinion piece, Robert Reich asked where any opposition may be found. The mainstream press has been cowered by the President-elects threats, or are now owned by oligarchs eager for a kleptocracy through which to expand their own power and reach. Our Universities fear loss of research funding, threats to accreditation, or direct attacks on their traditional independence. Non-profits and activist groups face the growing wrath of cultish devotees who would employ just about any tactic to complete their power grab. Trump is directing his personal rage (including criminal actions) at traditional politicians such as Republican Liz Cheney and those who had the temerity to question his prior actions. I almost wonder when we will hear the sound of marching feet from a new generation of Brownshirts. It took Adoph Hitler only 90 days to fully gather dictatorial control in Germany. He employed a faked Reischtag fire to assume total control. Might not our modern day version of an authoritarian party simply shut down the government (the first steps in that direction have been taken), then declare a national emergency before having a compliant Congress give his cabal extraordinary powers. It is a long shot but not beyond the realm of possibility. Frightening times, indeed.

Lets face facts, the man has shown no respect for the Constitution nor the traditions attached to a mature democracy. He tried to incite a treasonous uprising when he lost a valid election. He concocted a variety of schemes to subvert the constitutional and peaceful transfer of power. Think about that a moment. John Adams, in 1800, quietly went back to Boston when he realized that his political enemy, Thomas Jefferson, had more electoral votes. He didn’t call out the militia or incite unruly mobs. At that moment, the American experiment in Democracy was born. The words on the Constitution became real. Trump desecrated that Constitution and engaged in clear treason. His penalty, getting almost half of all votes in the recent election. Even today, his lackey supporters in Congress are rewriting recent events to absolve him of all wrongdoing while painting those who investigated his ethically bankrupt actions as the real villains. Thus, ever speak the tyrants.

I used to wonder how so many continued to worship murderous dictators like Joseph Stalin and Chairman Mao long after they passed from the scene. Despite their legacies of terror, they remained heroes to so many for so long. How could this be so? I am concluding that reality plays a small role in the perceptions of so many among us. We see what we want to see, not what is.

Lets take a quick look at an issue that many pundits claim influenced recent vote choices. Voters were known to say ‘I don’t like him personally, but the economy was better under Trump than Biden.’ WOW! Okay, let’s look beyond the fact that Donald was fortunate to inherit a growing economy that Obama had rescued from Bush’s ineptness. What did Donald do besides threatening that growth by mismanaging the Covid crisis. What then did Biden and his team do? Like Obama, Biden’s team made prudent decisions and investments to get our economy on track again.

Just a few reality points. During Biden’s tenure, the economy created 16 million new jobs. Some 20 million new new applications for new businesses were made. At least $1 trillion in private sector investments were made in clean energy and advanced manufacturing technologies. Inflation, which had spiked after Trump’s covid mismanagement, was eventually brought under control. And with a robust economy, wage increases exceeded inflation during the past two years. Finally, equity prices reached record levels in the major stock markets. Unlike what Americans apparently saw (thanks Fox News), the nation’s economy was seen by others as the envy of the world. Again, propoganda won over reality.

Another shibbeloth was that government outlays are out of control. The national debt is approaching $34 trillion dollars, or might be past that milestone. You know the old saying, a trillion here and a trillion there and soon we are talking about real money. The culprit was easy to identify for many. The damn Dems were spending us into bankruptcy. That was obvious, right! Now, Musk et. al. will cut $2 trillion from spending and downsize our bloated bureaucracy. Donald and his minions to the rescue.

Again, a reality check. Our fiscal health is not based on spending alone. Nor does public spending at the federal level depend much on the number of federal employees. Despite widespread perception, the total number of full-time federal employees hasn’t increased in decades … leveling off at slightly less than 3 million even as the population of the country has grown. Contract employees have grown a bit but not much. In fact, the government is doing more things for more people with essentially the same number of civil servants it had in the 1970s. And cutting the number of federal workers will hardly dent our national debt. They represent a rather small fraction of annual spending, a really small percentage indeed.

Why our exploding debt? Yes, spending has increased, but mostly for transfers to individuals and governments. These are programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, agriculture subsidies, SNAP, and so forth. Extreme pain will result from savaging such programs. Besides, as normed against the size of our economy, we spend less on domestic needs than our peer nations. For example, we spend some 18 percent of our GDP on our mixed public-private health care system in the U.S. for outcomes ranked near the bottom when compared to similar countries. Many of our peers (with public systems) spend less than 10 percent of their GDPs.

What the political deficit debate seldom mentions is the other essential factor in determining our fiscal health … revenue. That is unfortunate since that is where the primary culprit lies. I won’t bother to mention that our tax burdens are generally less than our peer nations … often much less. That convinces no one. I must mention that Americans are unusually sensitive on the tax issue. Others more easily see what they get for public investments. Americans have been conditioned to see taxes as little more than legalized theft. This tendency goes back to our roots. The British Parliament imposed a few taxes on the American Colonies to defray British expenses in defending the colonialist (and British interests) during the Seven Years War. As is their want, the citizens here went bonkers and eventually started a revolution.

Our debt is mostly a result of our unwillingness to pay our bills. Worse, it is a failure to ask those who have the ability to pay to pony-up their fair share. Essentially, the top of the income and wealth pyramid is getting away with grand theft. As Warren Buffet has said many times, yes, there has been a class war and my class has won.

I won’t go through the entire tax code to demonstrate this point. I will point out, however, that the top marginal income tax rates once hovered about 90 percent. They were cut first by Kennedy and then drastically by Reagan in the early 1980s. In recent decades, they bounced around between 35 and 39 percent. In addition, corporate tax rates have been slashed along with non wage income like deferred interest. These benefit rich tax payers the most. Again, Warren Buffet captures this outrage in a pithy way … he finds it odd that he pays a lower tax rate than the secretary that manages his schedule. So, it is not surprising that the share of income and wealth going to the top has gone through the roof.

The 2017 Trump tax cut alone added $2 trillion to our national debt. If extended, as Trump has promised to do, they will add another $4 trillion to a burden that we will pass on to our descendents. These cuts, and most all Republican tax cuts, are skewed to the well-to-do. For example, Trump’s cuts gave a pay out averaging $252,000 to our wealthier neighbors. The bottom 60 percent got tax cuts averaging $457 bucks. We have mortgaged our futures over an unwillingness to ask the wealthy to contribute to the public good. How sad.

And yet, Americans don’t get it. Dems have lost more and more working class stiffs over time. There are all kinds of reasons given for this. Some might even have a modicum of truth to them. But even if you misread reality in recent years (believing Trump did well by the economy), why would you support a man and a movement that clearly does not have your interests at heart. That is an exercise in delusional thinking. Why not end your suffering quickly by taking one of those handy guns and blowing your brains out? The best explanation I can come up with is pure hate. People, as Americans have done forever, will sacrifice their self-interest to support politicians who will sanction their prejudices and hatred. “I give you permission to despise and fear those who don’t look and act like you.” What a pathetic deal.

Time for a new look at reality.

I have resisted writing about the recent election for one excellent reason. I find the outright denial of reality an exceptionally soothing response to an event too painful and astonishing to fully accept. It didn’t happen. It could not have happened. But, of course, it did.

Just about half of all Americans who bothered to vote actually cast their ballots for a known degenerate of questionable mental stability who is clearly limited by transparent cognitive shortcomings. Never mind the sycophants who rush to his defense, and whose devotion might be explained by self-serving motives, those who worked closely with him during his first go around (at least those who had some competence and were not part of the Trump cult) universally disdained this man. They saw the incompetence and overweening narcissism up close and personal. Many of them spent their days not governing America but simply keeping a childlike tyrant from doing irreparable harm.

Now, he will soon be back in power. And this time, as we have already seen, he will not surround himself with anyone who has demonstrated prior competence, or who follows abiding principles, or who is committed to the best interests of this nation. No, Trump has already surrounded himself with toadies dedicated to the whims of an authoritarian figurehead utterly incapable of empathic feelings or appreciating anything beyond his own narrow self-interests. Of course, it is not clear whether Trump has any clear agenda beyond making money and staying out of prison. But those pulling his strings do, from self-serving billionaires like Elon Musk to nationalist-totalitarian types like Stephen Miller and Steven Bannon. They have dark visions remarkably similar to those well-known despotic figures who plunged the world into darkness back when I was born.

What is the best we might hope for over these next few years? If lucky, America will survive. However, the nation will be wracked by hard right earthquakes like massive deportations, the widespread persecution of political opponents, the abandonment of law and due-process, the abandonment of democratic principles, and the wholesale destruction of systems and programs dedicated to the public good. The massive redistribution of resources and power up the pyramid to those at the top will accelerate exponentially, perhaps to the point where restoring any sense of full democratic participation could well be lost. And that merely covers the domestic harm. Internationally, the alliance that has preserved Western values will be dismantled, at least partially, while global threats such as climate change may pass over the irrevocable point of no return.

At worst, what we consider the American experiment in democracy and the rule of law will be threatened, perhaps mortally. I would not dismiss Trump’s earlier assertion to his evangelical supporters that, if elected once more, this would be the last time voters would need to trudge to the polls for our quadrennial exercise in self-governance. Power, once more in the hands of the MAGA cabal, will not willingly be surrendered a second time. They will be better prepared at subverting the will of the people in the future, learning from their abortive, though extra-legal and even violent attempts, to retain power in 2020.

I’m not sure what is in Trump’s head, other than making money off of his return to power and striking back at his legions of so-called enemies. However, I’m pretty sure I can intuit the intentions of those who will be pulling his strings … since the gentlest version of the ominous MAGA agenda has been laid out in Project 2025. Their private aspirations likely involve an extreme version of totalitarian control, including an overt oppression of all whom they consider enemies. Trump has already made noises about going after those in Congress who dared investigate his attempts to subvert the constitutional exercise underlying the peaceful transfer of power in 2020.

It is hard to imagine how low the American electorate has sunk. My friends and associates from abroad are appalled and quite anxious about the future. The most common reaction I get is ‘whats wrong with you people.’ This election took place during my recent river trip on the Danube. I assumed I was surrounded by a typical cross-section of affluent fellow citizens and, in the days running up to the final voting, wondered might be gleaned from my travel associates.

I decided to wear the cap pictured above, or a similar one that said Make Lying Wrong Again. I looked forward to seeing what kind of reactions I might get, presuming my fellow travelers got my obvious declaration of personal political leanings. Many did, and the response from those was universally positive. At least a half dozen wanted to take snaps of my headgear. Many others expressed support and a desperate hope that their countrymen and women had not completely lost touch with reality. We also had a number of dinner conversations with like-minded folk on our river tour. We all looked upon the election with hope coupled with a nagging sense of dread. This election, unlike many others where emotions were hyped up, just might be a watershed moment in our history. This time around, the fears might be based in reality.

The belated lesson for me, I suspect, was that small and skewed samples tell us nothing. In fact, they can be misleading. I even discounted all the earlier polls suggesting a close election. I could not accept that, in the light of day, some 77 million adults would select the most patently incompetent and dangerous human being possible to lead the country. I mean, really, they could not possibly be that dense and short-sighted. Not since Aaron Burr had a top American political figure carried out such overt treasonous acts … never mind his depraved lifestyle and questionable ability to comprehend basic facts, connect the simplest dots, and feel the most basic form of empathy for others.

I’ve read all the excuses and facile explanations. Biden waited too long to bow out. White America in rural areas felt threatened or at least disenfranchised. The pace of change was unnerving. Males, young and old, feared losing their inherent privileges. And the economy was bad or, even more laughable, that eggs cost too much.

There you go. Some 550,000 Americans died in two World Wars (plus tens of thousands of others in other 20th century conflicts) ostensibly to preserve the essential character of the American experiment. But let’s vote it all away because eggs cost too much. The narrowness of perspective beggars belief, especially when one considers that inflation had been elevated, in part at least, because the economy was robust and growing so fast. From abroad, the post-pandemic American economy was the envy of the world. When I was involved in policy issues, we would have wet our pants to enjoy such levels of job creation and wage growth, especially at the bottom.

But let’s forget that and vote for the guy who is confused about who actually pays for the tarriffs he sought to impose on imports (likely spawning a ruinous trade war). Let’s go with the incompetent who ran several businesses into the ground, including a casino, which is considered a virtual license to steal … a genius who defrauded customers, cheated on taxes, and exhausted all domestic sources of loans. Let’s put in the White House a wanna-be totalitarian who functions as an indebted asset to our international enemies while insulting our long-term allies.

Of course, people get the governance they want and deserve. I doubt Trump’s election had much to do with inflation. After all, the annualized rate had fallen to about 2.5 percent in recent times. Some studies demonstrate that income growth had largely offset price increases. In any case, consumer spending remains robust with little evidence of belt-tightening that we’ve seen in other times when economic hardship was a real thing. Even if the economic doomsayers were correct, why in God’s name would you vote for a man who has run most of his businesses into the ground, stiffed many of his vendors, cheated his customers, and never done anything for the common man except mock them. There is little doubt that Trump and his wealthy minions will drain our nation’s wealth for personal gain. This is their most basic instinct.

If there is one constant about the Trump personality, it is that he sees all in a transactional manner where his personal gain is all that matters. In the end, this election was about the most basic human fears and emotions. Half of all Americans were driven by their deepest anxieties about gender, race, nationality, privilege, and cultural familiarity. They were driven mostly by misogyny, racism, and a crass tribalism. Reason and empathy became victims to their innermost irrational fears.

There are many proffered explanations for the Trump phenomenon, which I cannot go into here. But the breakup of our information sources into a kaleidoscope of news venues that cater to one’s priors must rank at the top. Low information voters get virtually no input that counters their priors, mainstream outlets being replaced by slanted versions that keep a captive audience engaged through increasingly distorted but highly charged emotional content. The rise of talk radio and agenda-driven outlets guarantees that non-discerning folk can be exposed to a unending stream of personalized propoganda. Goebbels, Hitler’s propoganda guru, would salivate at the power wielded today by the purveyors of skewed right-wing news. Many Democrats hang on to the old shibbeloth that voters will respond to rational arguments and evidence. Sadly, this not true, even if it once had been in the past. Americans want someone to tell them why they feel uneasy or anxious while providing them with easy, palliative solutions. You fear those who don’t look like you. I will round them up and get rid of them. Sound familiar. It worked like a charm in 1930’s Germany.

I cannot say I care much anymore. I am old and, fortunately, will pass from this scene sooner rather than later. However, I do feel quite bad for the generations behind me. They will bear the consequences of today’s folly. For me, any emotional attachment to this country has been severed. How can anyone retain any sense of allegiance to a people so bereft of common sense and any minimal level of decency. As I’ve often said, my one regret in life is that I had not emigrated to a civilized society when I was younger.

I would not be surprised if Lady Liberty did not hike back to France one of these days.

I’ve been absent for a while during and after my recent trip to Europe. Perhaps it is time to reengage.

I suspect we all have points in our lives when our lives change direction … sometimes in a dramatic fashion. Surely, one for me happened in 1984 when I entered a treatment program and kicked my addiction to alcohol. But another equally dramatic change occurred two decades earlier, in January of 1964. That was the moment I started my college career at Clark University in Worcester Mass., my home town. And it was all remarkably serendipitous and shockingly transformative.

I suppose that is the point of this short essay. Unanticipated events can have large consequences. I developed as a child without any freaking idea of my self-worth (it never occurred to me I had any) or what I might do in life. In fact, I can recall thinking that I might join the military when I grew up. My rationale? I thought they took anyone … a fact that just might save a talentless screw-up like myself from living on the streets. For the life of me, I could not conjure up a single skill that I might contribute to society, much less prompt anyone to hire me.

And so, I wandered through my early years without direction or goals. Thank God this was before we morphed into a mature Republican dog-eat-dog, Darwinian struggle for survival. Today, kids and their parents consider a C in the 2nd grade the end of all their life’s future dreams. I was no star in the classroom, far from it, but it never occurred to me that spelled doom in the future. It never dawned on me that my early schooling might lead to anything meaningful in life. In fact, I never considered the possibility that I had much of a future at all.

And so, I just went with the flow. I did not stand out in my early years as a student. I thought of myself as an ordinary kid at the Upsala Street elementary school, an ancient building that catered to the ethnic, working-class kids on Vernon Hill in the mostly factory town (at the time) of Worcester. As I recall, the kids around me seemed destined for non-descript adult lives. We spent our days playing sports or marauding through the streets causing general mayhem. I felt totally average among this neighborhood gang of quite ordinary kids.

So, I was shocked when the Principal called me in at the end of my days there to say that she would recommend me for an advanced class at Providence St. Junior High, a nearby institution that also catered to working class kids but from a broader geographical area. This advanced class was comprised of 5 boys and about 20 (or more) girls. I suspect the 5 boys were the few males who had not yet run afoul of the juvenile authorities. I cannot recall how I compared to the girls … though they all seemed smarter than me, or at least studied harder. In truth, I really never got to know any of them. Among the handful of boys, my memory is that I might have been next to last in terms of academic performance. As I recall, my grades reflected my undistinguished performance. Funny, I still recall each and every one of the guys quite clearly while I can’t recall my doctoral program mates with much clarity at all.

After 8th grade, I took the exam for what was called St. John’s Preparatory school. It was a Catholic boys school with an excellent reputation run by the Xaverian Brothers, an order focused on teaching. I’m not sure I felt any confidence in my prospects and was amazed that I made the cut. In fact, I was placed in the top freshman class based on my entrance exam performance. Go figure!

At the time, the school was located in the worst part of town in a dilapidated couple of buildings (though they would start migrating to a gorgeous suburban campus in my senior year). The physical plant had nothing to do with the excellent education. They only admitted smart kids, had a rigorous and fixed curriculum (no electives), and demanded obedience. Screwing around would get you wacked upside the head. Complain to your parents, and they would wack upside your head on the other side.

I must admit, though. While I went on to get Doctorate at a prestigious R-1 university, I felt more academic competition there (at St. Johns) than at any other educational level. Though I worked all four years, I did try rather hard in my classes. Yet, I remained mired in the middle of my class by my senior year. Once again, I was average, below average in anything involving math. On one algebra exam I scrawled Veni, Vidi, Flunki at the top of my answer sheet (I came, I saw, I flunked in Latin). The instructor wrote almost in response.

But I did graduate. Here, I took a fortuitous detour. Rather than matriculating at the best local Catholic College (Holy Cross), I entered the Maryknoll Seminary outside of Chicago. I would study to be a missionary priest and save the world. Why I thought I was up to this modest task now seems the height of hubris, if not folly, to me. That seminary had a good academic reputation but, in my mind, it was not a real college. Still, before I came to my senses and left during the 1st semester of my 2nd year, I had once again been placed in an advanced class. Again, go figure! Others saw some hope in me which remained totally hidden from my view.

When I got back home, I faced a decision … where to enroll in school. My first thought was Holy Cross which, if you recall, had been my choice upon finishing high school. That’s where several of my HS friends had gone. But they did not take new applicants for the Spring Semester. what to do?

So, I looked at this other local institution called Clark University … a very decent school, but one not favored in my community. I had been enveloped within a Catholic, conservative working class culture all my young life. Clark, on the other hand, was seen as a den of atheists and Communists by many in my community. In fact, though virtually all graduates from my high school went on to college, I can not recall any matriculating at Clark in that era … not a single one. Perhaps that was why they seemed eager to have me.

Clark had been founded in 1887 as the 2nd Graduate School in the U.S. after John’s Hopkins. It quickly expanded to include undergraduates and soon found it’s bearings. It’s Psychology department was quite strong with Sigmund Freud choosing it to give his only lectures in the U.S. (See statue below). It also developed a strong Geography department while Robert Goddard, considered the father of American space travel, developed the first liquid fuel rockets while a member of the Physics Department. In fact, he launched his experimental rocket in a farmer’s field that later became a golf course on which I wasted a good deal of my youth.

Still, there was no way I would have considered Clark had I gone on to college directly from High School. Only my ill-considered digression into a Catholic seminary opened that possibility up to me. I presumed it was serendipity. But maybe more than chance was involved, perhaps something like fate. For at Clark, my life trajectory changed.

Still, there were some reservations expressed in my family at this choice. Would I be corrupted by the insidious brainwashing of a satanic faculty. In truth, that sounded both exciting and a bit dangerous to me. In my view, alas, no such brainwashing occurred. However, I did lose what remained of my religious sentiments in two weeks, three at most. No one challenged my beliefs. They merely melted away as my brain exploded with new ideas and questions. What happened? Finally, I was in an environment where I could unleash my full intellectual curiosity. What a relief and a blessing and (most of all) an exciting adventure. I was finally encouraged to think and figure things out on my own.

I was cautious for a while. I actually studied that first semester while working many hours on the night shift at a local hospital. I was making my own way through school (no financial help from parents), which was quite feasible in those idyllic days. Still, I had grave doubts about how I would do in a real university. If you remember, I felt I had not stood out at any point in my educational career to date despite getting some feedback to the contrary. Thus, I was astounded to find myself toward the top of my class rankings after the first semester. How did that happen? For one thing, learning became a joy, not an onerous task.

I’m not certain I learned the proper lesson from that initial success. I can do this, I concluded. For someone with my limited attention span, read restless mind, this was bad news. I started paying more attention to the issues and debates raging around me in society. Soon, I found myself getting more and more involved. I could still handle my classes but discovered that much of my learning happened outside the formal classroom.

I think, for the first time, I was in a school setting which prized independent thought. I loved that. Despite my limited free time, I would spend hours debating the issues of the day with fellow students. And this was the tumultuous 60s after all, there were endless issues to debate. Over the next 12 to 18 months, I would question, explore, and reevaluate virtually every aspect of the fixed dogmas that had dominated my life to that point. I confronted each or my presumptions about life. Soon, I experienced a series of struggles, then epiphanies, as I erected a new normative framework and personal philosophy. It was not easy, but it has lasted me a lifetime.

It was not long before I joined the (Vietnam) antiwar movement when it was yet an unpopular thing to do. Even now that I’m an octogenerian, my youthful transformation on matters of war and social justice strike me as correct and proper. Most importantly, I never simply accepted the beliefs of others. I first had to convince myself that what I believed and did made sense. That was not always easy to do given the encrusted beliefs of my early cultural cocoon and when taking any stand that involved controversy and risk contradicted the world in which I had been raised. I recall returning from Peace Corp service in India to find college kids merely repeating slogans they had heard from others. To me, they had not experienced the crucible of personal change I had. That struck me as profoundly shallow, if not disappointing.

Years later, when I was involved in the hotly contested debates about welfare reform at the national and state level, I was uniquely prepared. Much like the issues we faced in the 60s, welfare was a nuanced political struggle that raged in the 80s and 90s. There were no easy answers even when the combatants appeared to possess firm convictions. You had to think things through, come to a reasonable set of conclusions amidst contentious theories, evidence, and norms before arriving at your positions. All wicked problems demand such a struggle. That is what makes them so much fun.

And that is what I learned at Clark. I discovered and refined my ability to think on my own. I could bore you with many vignettes from those years. Be satisfied with one. The best psychology undergrad students (perhaps the top 4 or 5 as I recall) received National Science Foundation grants to do original summer research. Amazingly, I got one (another go figure moment). Another young man (who really was brilliant) also received one, and we shared a work space. There came a day when we didn’t work on our research. We debated the Vietnam War for hour after hour. He was dead against it while I tried vainly to find some justification for our involvement. At the end of the day, we agreed to disagree, but I knew he had won the debate. Soon, I was leading the leftist movement on campus. These were the kinds of intensive and emotional dialogues that really educated me during those years.

Thank God I stumbled into Clark University. Not long ago, some neighbors mentioned reading that it had been identified as an institution where relatively average students enter who later wind up studying or working at elite schools. Hmm, that was me. I blossomed at Clark and eventually wound up having a remarkable career as an academic and policy wonk at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I had escaped being average, seemingly by accident. Not bad for struggling working class kid from the mean streets of Worcester.

Below is my college graduation pic!

I am currently sailing up the Danube River from Constanta on the Black Sea to Vienna. So, I’m likely to be distracted with tours of local sights. In addition, the cyber connections are quite iffy at times. The bottom line … I may or may not be posting anything for a while.

The best thing about this trip is that I’m out of the country during our national insanity and the possible death of American democracy and rule of law. If that happens next week, I might seek asylum abroad and not return home. But who would want an old fart like me?

As are virtually all my peers, we are watching the national election with dread. Will the American experiment with democracy be at an end? Did all those who died in this country’s legitimate wars perish in vain, merely to now hand power over to a megolomaniac wanna-be dictator? The very prospect boggles our imaginations.

When such possibilities drive me toward a deep depression, I look to the heavens, well to our cosmos at least. No, I’m not looking to any divine presence for comfort and certainly not for a remedy. That childhood fantasy evaporated over six decades ago. But there are mysteries out there that still can inspire awe and even generate a form of devotion. More to the point, what is out there instills a new sense of perspective within me. That is refreshing and much needed.

It is not entirely clear why my appreciation of our galactic wonders inspires me so much. Part of it is the immensity and complexity of what is out there. Part of it is the awareness that, despite our technical sophistication, there is so much left to learn and to understand about our universe. I ponder, as the only sentient beings about (of which we are aware that is), whether we are part of an evolutionary process that is creating some future deity of unimaginable powers. Perhaps, as we continue to change and grow, we can approach some capabilities we now associate with divine entities. Either that, or we may be destined for a premature extinction due to our collective stupidity. But let us not dwell on that.

I try to keep an open mind in such matters. Our imagination is the gift (or curse) given to us by evolution (or God). Why not use it? And nothing stirs the imagination like the magistry and mystery of the universe out there.

There are so many awe-inspiring entities out there in the night sky (unseen to the naked eye) … black holes and quasars and astrophysical jets and novas and supernovas and many other curiosities. But what first literally numbs my brain is the sheer size of our larger world. A century ago, what we thought of as the universe was little more than an imperfect understanding of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. Now, we can appreciate that it was merely a drop in the bucket.

Let’s start with a measure of distance. A light year (the distance light travels in one year) comes out to be approximately 5.88 trillion miles. Now, that’s a long haul. Yet, our nearest galaxy to us, Centauri Proximus, is well over 4 light years away … like 25 plus trillion miles. We will be long extinct by the time Voyager I (the furthest that any man made object has traveled since it was launched several decades) could ever get there.

Let’s look at the cluster of galaxies around us. Our immediate supercluster is composed of 54 galaxies. One of these is our Milky Way which is composed of some 100 billion stars and measures 100,000 light years across. Scaling up, we have the Virgo Supercluster which has 100 galaxies and measures 110 million light years across. Expanding our view further, we next capture the Laniakea Supercluster. This baby encompasses some 100,000 galaxies and measures 520 million light years across. Already, we are confronting numbers that boggle our poor minds, mine at least. Yet, we have seen nothing yet.

As our knowledge of the universe expands with powerful telescopes mounted on satellites out in space, our pedestrian minds kept getting blown. A number of years ago, astronomers focused their attention on what appeared to be an area of empty space. They developed images based on long-term exposures to that seemingly blank area. That empty space, it turned out, was not so empty after all. There were another 100,000 galaxies lurking out there.

As of today, cosmologists have arrived at a consensus about the size of the known universe. It contains some 2.2 trillion galaxies. The number of stars out there, many like our sun, is a really, really huge number as you can well imagine. To put it in perspective, there are more stars in our known universe than there are grains of sand covering the entire earth. If we went in any direction, we would need to go 45.6 light years before we reached the end of what we can now observe. And remember, each light year is about 5.9 trillion miles. That gives us a diameter of the known universe of some 93 billion light years across.

I’m not sure what all this tells us as fragile humans living on a spinning sphere at the outer edge of a single galaxy in a remote cluster of galaxies. For me, it is hard to get worked up by our importance when we exist in such vastness. We really are a speck in the universe. On the other hand, if we are the only sentient beings in this vast cosmos, then we are special. But what are the odds? And what might it mean, if anything?

One last note to blow our minds further. Some theoretical physicists and astro-phycisists argue that we can only see (as of now) a tiny portion of what exists out there. They have estimated (using math only they understand) that the real universe may be some 150 sextillion times larger than what we can observe. Numbers like that put me into a catatonic state. So, think of a small light bulb. That is what we know (what we can observe) at present. Place that bulb at the center of Pluto (once a real planet). All the rest of Pluto represents what we don’t know.

I can never explore such concepts without … well … having my mind blown. Can we ever get to know this wide world. Not today, we can’t. But look how much has changed in just one century. Moreover, physicists chatter about phenomena like quantum entanglement, which suggests a form of physical connection over vast distances. Who knows what the future holds? At the least, the immensity of our universe changes my perspective on things. The small crap that we tend to obsess about seems just a tad less important. As the election approaches, I need the solace of being utterly insignificant.

Like everyone else, I am inundated with political solicitations these days. Perhaps a few want my general support, but the vast majority are only after my money. Today, perhaps 98.9 percent of all political effort and energy goes into separating you from your wealth. What is especially disturbing is that the pitches are endless (they arrive on my phone every few minutes) along with snail mail and telephone calls. Moreover, they almost universally exploit our basic emotions … fear, guilt, hate, shame, and various appeals to our core tribal instincts. Political operators know full well that appeals to the better angels of our natures are hopeless. Stoking our darker side works.

Both sides use the same emotional forms of extortion. And while these tactics, often utterly disingenuous, appall me, I periodically do contribute to a number of Dems … though on my own schedule and not in response to their over-the-top emotional appeals. Someone will have to explain to me one day why the FEC deadlines, which appear to arrive about every third day or so, are so magical. What really happens when you don’t meet one of these endless accounting deadlines? Are the head fundraisers taken out and shot? That would explain the apparent ‘the sky-is-falling‘ desperation.

I won’t vent about the advantages of the British parliamentary system. The PM calls for an election, and it is over in a matter of weeks. Our own election horror never, ever ends. It is a continuous nightmare. How civilized are the Brits, a short election season, and all is sorted. Better yet, the dominant party elects the chief executive, not risking an ill-informed electorate choosing the village idiot to run things (NOTE: this very concern led the Founding Fathers to create an electoral college). Rather than all that stuff, I want to chat today about an issue raised by one aspect of the endless political begging to which we must endure.

I get solicitation from both sides, which surprises me since I never send a dime to the Republicans, or should I say neo-Nazis. While those of a liberal persuasion try all the usual tactics, I’ve noticed that Conservatives are unique in one respect. They almost universally start their pitches with the salutation … dear patriot. Does that mean the Dems as a group don’t like America? That seems unlikely since they strike me as much more concerned with protecting our Constitution and other fundamental values like the rule of law, at least comparatively speaking. So, what is going on here? What is this ‘patriot’ thing anyway?

When I was a young man, I recall believing that the U.S. was the best country in the world, bar none. We were an economic and political powerhouse. To my young mind, we had saved the globe from Fascism and now were in a life and death struggle with the evils of totalitarian Communism. By any measure, we were the good guys, the ones who wore the white hats. I recall a moment during the Cuban Missile stand-off. I was in a Catholic seminary at the time. At the worst of this crisis, I contemplated leaving my studies for the priesthood to join the military, assuming I could return to my vocation (if I survived) what I feared might be WWIII.

But the 1960s were a decade when all things were reassessed, including the myths within which I was raised. Simply by paying attention, and reading voraciously, I learned about the systemic ways in which we in this country exploited vulnerable peoples. Back then, America was one of two Western nations overtly practicing legal apartheid (the other being South Africa). No wonder the German Nazis in the early 1930s researched American statutes as they initially launched their legal attacks on undesirable groups, eventually leading to the holocaust and a final solution.

Soon, I stumbled upon the disturbing reality that we were not so innocent on the international stage either. We sponsored coups, assassinated leaders, and propped up the worst dictators who at least nominally joined our side in the cold war 🥶 . The purity of our norms and intentions quickly unraveled with such revelations. Our ill-considered actions in Vietnam and our CIA led overthrow of the elected Allende government in Chili were the final straws in my mind and heart (anyone remember the movie Missing, starring Jack Lemon and Sissy Spacek).

Still, I managed to maintain some attachment to the concept of a national allegiance. We were no longer the esteemed city on the hill that stood as a beacon of virtue to all others. But we were okay for the most part. Besides, we had licked de jure discrimination at home (not an easy task). Besides, I had convinced myself that things would definitely get better when my generation rose to power.

But things didn’t get better. Rather, the right-wing strategy articulated by future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell in 1973 emerged as the basis of a conservative revolution. Powell argued that Conservatives had to gradually take over all important institutions from the media, to the courts, to educational venues, to voting protocols, etc. Starting with Reagan, then Gingrich, and, more recently, the Tea Party and the MAGA movement, the country has drifted (then lurched) to the hard-right. The foundational elements of democracy are now on very thin ice indeed. Extreme beliefs, including the denial of truth and science and civility, have emerged as the new American norms and the default position in our political dialogue. The doublethink laid out in Orwell’s dystopian warning, 1984, has become reality, at least in part. What happened to the innocent hopes of our youth?

By the beginning of this century, I reluctantly admitted to myself that the U.S. probably would never escape the status of a wanna-be banana republic. Wealth and income inequality had soared to levels not seen since just before the great crash in 1929. We remained virtually the only civilized country that did not guarantee medical care, and thus enabled 40,000 plus amenable deaths per year (before Obamacare). Our profit-oriented health care system was the most expensive in the world yet delivered average outcomes at best. We had insane gun policies leading to carnage in the streets and children traumatized by school shootings. Our child poverty rates, which would be seen as a horrific public crisis elsewhere, garnered indifference here. The cost of higher education, affordable or free in our competitor countries, continued to rise dramatically, thus becoming a privilege for the affluent rather than an avenue to self-improvement for the many. We dithered as global warming went from a looming threat to an unfolding disaster. And social mobility withered as the uber rich exerted increasing control over society. As I’ve oft said, if you want the so-called ‘American dream,‘ go to Scandinavia.

Already delusional and cynical, I watched in horror as George W. Bush won reelection in 2004. This happened after he was manipulated by his Neo-Con advisors into highly questionable military disasters. I recall confronting my late wife in 2005 that we seriously should consider emigration. A few years earlier, we almost bought a house in a golf course community on Vancouver Island outside Victoria BC. Oh, how I wish we had. It would be worth a fortune today and serve as an easy escape from our national nightmare. But my good spouse rejected my sound suggestion (as she oft did), saying something to the effect that this was her country and she wasn’t going to cut and run. So we stayed. And things (for a brief moment at least) improved with the election of Barak Obama. That glimmer of hope was short-lived.

Rattled for a moment by Obama’s popularity, the extremists on the right soon rallied under Donald Trump and upped their attack on our basic values with renewed vigor. As Mich McConnell said at the beginning of Obama’s administration, the sole Republican goal was making Barak a one-term president. Good government wasn’t even on their radar. Negotiating and compromise were totally eliminated from their political lexicon. Gaining sustained power, they fantasized, was within reach.

They drove out any remaining moderates from their party and excised all remaining sanity and sensibility. Really! What is wrong with a party (but mostly with their supporters) who argue that hurricanes can be engineered to advantage the Democrats, that Jewish space-lasers are a real thing, that Hillary Clinton ran pedophilia rings out of pizza parlors, and that the January 6 mob attacking our national Capitol to hang the sitting VP and disrupt the Constitutional transfer of power were tourists with an interest in civics. When you cannot dominate with the logic and sense of your policy positions, scare the shit out of people. Starting with an alleged invasion at our southern border, that’s precisely what the MAGA movement has done.

Everything that anyone with any prognostication skills might have anticipated has come to pass. We now have one major party that is devoted to ending once and for all the American experiment in democracy. They would end the rule of law, persecute all those whom they deem enemies, and attack a hated outgroup (immigrants, most people of color, and now liberals like me if you take Donald Trump at his word) in an effort to Make America Great Again. This is a reliving of an historical nightmare. Much like 1930s Germany, this is the language of totalitarianism and of a horrific dictatorship. We sacrificed over 400,000 lives to stop Fascism back then. We’re we wrong in doing that?

Perhaps we were since we now seem to be operating out of the same German Nazi playbook. Over time, the conservative (extreme Republican) push to undermine democracy has systemically purged voting rolls, made the exercise of voting more difficult, put radical officials in charge of local voting protocols, gerrymandered voting districts where they could, and did anything else they could to gain a semblance of dictatorial control. Now, they hope for a final victory. Pushing the white nationalist dream, Donald Trump promised a group of evangelical believers that, if elected one more time, they would not have to worry about future elections. The implicit promise … there wouldn’t be any.

I looked the other way during some six decades of increasing disappointment. I kept hoping for the best. But what we see today is unbearable. Perhaps the most disgusting and despicable character ever in public life has at least a 50-50 chance of being elevated once again to our highest office. And if, by some chance, he loses at the polls, he and his minions suggest that they will try to seize power by extra-legal means. They have worked hard to build up the myth that the upcoming election is being rigged. THEN, we truly will have become a banana republic. 🍌

So, let me return to my original question. Am I a patriot? The answer is an unequivocal NO. Even if things were marginally okay in this country, I would have difficulty with the worship of any society that appears so indifferent to those who struggle in life, a nation that fails to use its preeminent position to advance a global campaign on things that matter … like climate change. Moreover, any displays of national pride (like any overweening devotion to a cause) breeds a kind of disturbing tribalism. I can never quite shake the image of men going over the top to be slaughtered in no-man’s land during WWI, only because they wore a different uniform and saluted a different flag. The absolute folly of it all.

But my current disgust with demonstrations of so-called national pride is based on a more fundamental basis. To be a patriot, one has to have a sense of pride in the culture of a place and the quality of the population. Why should one feel pride here in America … the Darwinian struggle for supremacy with a winner-take-all social environment, the slaughter in our streets because guns are valued more than life, the senseless suffering and death because we value profits over healing, or the disinterest we show to how too many of our youth are faring. I could go on, but why?

The bottom line is this. Almost half of the electorate is willing to vote for a man who is, at best, a pathological narcissist and likely a destructive sociopath. When pressed, many of these MAGA types express a cult-like devotion to a man who has cheated, lied, and conned his way through life. He has refused to pay vendors, defrauded customers, cheated on his wives, broken numerous laws, and lied so often and so outrageously that many believe he cannot distinguish fact from fiction. And yet, his MAGA base worships him as a virtual deity. He would be the first elected felon to our highest office, which would enable him to escape justice for all his other pending crimes.

I’m sorry. I could tolerate perhaps 1 in 5 (perhaps even 1 in 4) voters choosing a man who would end the American experiment in democracy and the rule of law. You would find that level of insanity in many other civilized nations. But I cannot accept the fact that such a despicable man has a very good chance of being reelected. His pernicious character is not a secret. It is known. His mental decline is on full display. All the reasonable officials who witnessed his first term up close (serving in his administration) have sounded alarms bells regarding the danger he poses. And yet, his cult-like devotees follow him slavishly. Worse, they might well put him in charge one more time even as he suggests it will spell the end of Constitutional rule here at home and the stable Western alliance internationally. His fawning support for the worst dictators around the globe is no secret.

In the end, I cannot feel anything for a country and a culture that somehow embraces such widespread insanity and systemic hate. That is too much. I am probably too old to emigrate now. I will, however, never forgive myself for not moving on when it was apparent just how far this country would descend into a peculiar form of self-destruction and bitter division.

From what I know, much of the world looks at us in disbelief. how could this powerful country even consider putting such an obvious madman in charge. For years, that was a question I asked about 1930s Germany. Now I know the answer to that old query of mine.

I will be in Europe during the actual election. I hope no one asks me where I’m from. If they do, perhaps I will say Canada. I’d hate to admit I’m from such a backward and possibly dangerous country. 😳 Heaven help us, and the world.

The nature vs. nurture question is grist for a great debate that I’m not going to resolve in a short blog. This perennial question centers on the following conundrum … are we basically determined by our genetic code or are we more of a Tabla Rosa on which our experiences and training assert a profound (if not complete) influence? Much of what our social programming does to and with people presumes they can be molded into functioning adults and reshaped when they go astray. But what if that premise is false? What if we are what we were originally designed to be? Think of the implications for morality, guilt and innocence, our educational efforts, and our religious or spiritual traditions. Can Hell be justified when a person’s fate is predetermined by some genetic roll of the dice?

This will not be a learned treatise on this weighty topic. This is more of a pop-up blog on an intriguing issue that occasionally wanders through my overactive brain. Besides, I’m beginning to focus on an upcoming trip and am becoming preoccupied elsewhere. As a result, my already limited attention span has been further diluted. I won’t have as much time for this nonsense in the intermediate future.

I recently read another of those natural experiments, more like an exploitable incident, that are employed to shed light on this usually unanswerable puzzle. Two identical twins were separated at birth. They were raised by two separate families in totally different locations. It was not until both were about 40 years old that they discovered the existence of the other. This gave both them, and some researcher types, an opportunity to do a comparative assessment of their development along with what they had become.

When their lives were compared, the similarities were astonishing. They had remarkably indistinguishable lives including marrying women with the same names and assigning the same names to their offspring. I cannot recall all the similarities any longer but it is the stuff of The Twilight Zone. They not only looked the same, but their behavioral patterns were scarily identical. This is not the only example known to science by far. Researchers have long looked for twins separated early to explore whether nature or environment overules genetic proclivities.

Relying on my rapidly diminishing memory, my sense is that nature wins out in these so-called natural experiments. But the evidence is suggestive and not totally conclusive. There are always alternative explanations for such ‘findings.’ And when in doubt, we oft rely on our personal experiences to settle things. It aint science, but it is very human to rely on personal anecdotes to sort things out.

I can yet recall the Brit to whom I served as mentor while he was at the University of Wisconsin as a Harkness Fellow. After his six month stay in Madison, he returned to Great Britain and to a distinguished career in human services. Recently, he was the head of research for a national organization of British social workers.

Anyway, he once lamented the problems he and his spouse were having raising one of their two sons. The difficulties persisted despite all the efforts he (and his spouse who worked in the education field) put in to rectify some behavioral issues. Exasperated, he remarked to me one day that he had long sided with nurture (or the quality of upbringing) in the nurture-nature square-off. But his own parental struggles had changed his mind. He now thought that nature was king.

Not surprisingly, I’ve looked to my own experiences for insights on this matter. As an only child, it would be astonishing if a twin were to suddenly pop up to permit a comparison between our adult lives. That would be fascinating but unlikely to happen. Therefore, I will continue with another vignette. It involves fraternal twins (two Irish lasses who grew up in Chicago). One of them recalled to me that, as tots, the two siblings spent much time looking out the window to their Chicago street below. One sister focused on the activities right in front of her. The other recalled always looking up the street and inevitably wondering what was just beyond her line of sight. The one who focused on the immediate scene grew up to a good, but quite ordinary, adulthood. She married an accountant, had a family, and remained in Chicago. The other, the more inquisitive sibling who always pondered what was beyond her immediate line-of-sight, left her native city to get a Doctorate in Russian Studies at Georgetown. She later was a top aide to Senator Kennedy and held several high government positions. She became the risk-taker. It always struck me that the differences evidenced in their early childhoods were precursors to what they would become as adults. Their distinct life paths simply were meant to be.

My favorite cousin was a voracious reader and an educator by avocation. She married a man who was deeply into math and computers. One of their two children had two daughters. I noticed that one of these grandchildren became an engineer, having always been interested in math. The other now works for New York publishing house, having always been interested in literature. It struck me that the genes of the grandmother had been bequeethed on one granddaughter while the genes of the grandfather had been forwarded to the other. Speculation, of course, but intriguing to think about. These two young women went on separate vocational paths early in their development according to their grandmother.

Then there is my good childhood friend. When we were young, and not playing sports, we argued a lot. He reflected the social attitudes of his parents, which I found overly conservative even if I liked them personally. Fast forward to adulthood when we reconnected after many years. Besides a career as a high school counselor, he remained in the Army Reserves, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. I thought he might have similar political views as an adult. But no, he had turned into a passionate liberal, even vocally anti-war which I found surprising given his military rank.

Just the other day I chatted with him on the phone (he still lives in Massachusetts). Though there are few MAGA types in the Bay State, he does run onto them on occasion. He recounted some of his encounters with them. Apparently, he pulls no punches. He still is in good shape (he was always an excellent athlete) but, like me, he is entering his octogenerian era. Didn’t he worried about getting punched out? Nope, he said, it is more important to speak the truth.

On reflection, I assume he found his way to whom he really was after encountering the personal freedom associated with becoming an adult. It was merely hidden during his younger years when we argued so frequently. One thing is certain, he didn’t move so far to the left through his extensive military experiences.

Oddly enough, of his several offspring, one son has become a staunch Republican. This was his son who attended my alma mater, Clark University, which was known for producing liberals (like me). My friend merely shakes his head in despair and wonders at this. Where did he go wrong, he laments? Apparently, you can’t put in what God has left out.

I cannot ponder such things without reflecting on my own experiences. As I’ve written before, I grew up in an ethnic, working-class, Catholic environment. Everyone was a Democrat but very conservative in many respects. Though I struggled inside, I bought into this particular orthodoxy strongly enough to enter a Catholic Seminary after high school.

But I left after about a year and a half. I sensed a war inside myself where my choices and behaviors were at odds with my authentic self. And that has been an epiphany for me. There is an authentic self in most of us, which can remain hidden for many years. I used to laugh at kids saying they need time to find themselves. I no longer do. Perhaps realizing the self that is hard-wired within is the most important thing we can do in life.

Obviously, more to come on this topic.

It is commonly lamented in these days that we are a divided country. It is alleged that our politics are more divisive than they have ever been. Many stress the seemingly obvious fact that the partisan gap has congealed into a kind of normative rigidity seldom seen in our republic. There is, of course, much hyperbole in such assertions. We conveniently forget that the Shay’s Rebellion of Western Massachusetts took place at the very beginning of our independence as a nation. Even before we had a functioning constitution and government, internal tensions were pulling us apart. Clearly, our national unity was never more tenuous than in the years leading up to the Civil War.

In point of fact, we have been divided as a people since the earliest days of our self-governance. The issue of slavery was an obvious and glaring sticking point. It has always been difficult to square away the high sounding principles of equality borrowed from John Locke and other philosophers of the enlightenment who inspired American revolutionaries by arguing for the equality of all with a crass justification of keeping some humans in bondage.

Another deep divide crept into the fabric of our republic almost from the onset. Our so-called Founding Fathers hoped that some comity might exist among those in government once the Constitution was accepted. There were concerns, of course, even at the start of the American experiment. After all, there were few existing examples of peaceful self management to lend support for this American imnovation in self-governance. The British had waged a bitter Civil War in the mid-17th century while France devolved into violence and anarchy around the time that the Colonies were integrating themselves into this experiment called the United States.

The framers of the Constitution were conflicted. They wanted to avoid any type of monarchy or totalitarian rule. At the same time, they feared giving too much control to the ‘people’ whom they viewed with some distrust. The men who created the mechanics of this new government were educated leaders with considerable property. They were the elite of those times. What was to prevent the unwashed mob from simply voting to redistribute wealth from those that had it to those that didn’t. Given this concern, the democratic protocols in our early days enacted were decidedly undemocratic. Voting rights were extremely limited to propertied males and an electoral college was created to hopefully control the masses from putting unacceptable persons in charge of the national government.

The desire for a mature democracy, and the simultaneous fear of it, has been at the core of our political tensions ever since. However, the subsequent twists and turns have been convoluted and hard to follow. I try to follow one simplistic thread below.

George Washington was more or less appointed the first President than elected to that office. Until he exercised authority, not many understood the role of a chief executive other than that his powers were to be limited. Many states had their own legislative bodies designate their members to the electoral college, no popular vote was permitted. George was an easy pick no matter the method employed. He was thought to be the embodiment of the Platonic ideal of a wise and benign authority figure, exercising influence through wisdom and restraint.

The hope was that educated and wise men of property and propriety would continue to govern sensibly. That hope was premised on the exclusion of the common man, anyone non-white, or poor, and certainly all females. In an 1805 judicial case, Martin vs. Massachusetts, it was ruled that the idea of liberty could not possibly mean the destruction of men’s patriarchal authority by extending to women any role in the political process. White, male, Christian rule was assumed.

Life, however, is messy. Almost immediately, the factions feared by the Founding Fathers began to form. On one side were those who remembered well the failures of the original Articles of Confederation, which only weakly united the 13 colonies in an unworkable association. The focus of this group was largely advocated by Washington, Adams, and Hamilton. These men wanted a stronger executive, closer ties with England, and unifying institutions such as a national bank. They also favored, in general at least, a more pro-active government to address common problems. They would evolve into a political party that went through several iterations … the Federalists, the Whigs, and finally an upstart Republican Party.

The other side organized themselves around Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and later Andrew Jackson. They were generally known early on as Jeffersonian Democrats or Democratic-Republicans. Like all the early political parties, they suffered from internal tensions, but they differed from their opponents in several key ways. They tended toward a support for limited government, toward a devotion to agrarian and rural ideals, and toward embracing at least the rhetoric of the French Revolution. Especially, with the ascension of Andrew Jackson to the White House, those Democratic-Republicans who remained devoted to Jeffersonian ideals stressed the equality of the common man as long as he was male and neither Black nor a Native American. As Democrats, they increasingly became the party supporting national expansion, state and local control over national hegemony, and pro-slavery sentiments.

Those retaining a belief in a stronger central government, in national investments in infrastructure and later education, and free labor (anti-slavery) eventually drifted to the Whig Party which also picked up disaffected members of the old Democratic-Republican group.

By the 1850s, however, the slavery issue dominated American politics. The successful expansion of America’s manifest destiny under Democratic President James K. Polk to the Pacific Ocean (war with Mexico and treaty with England) radically elevated the question of slavery to a crisis level. How would these new lands be organized? Would slavery be permitted or not, and how would this critical decision be determined? On such matters would the uneasy truce between North and South be maintained.

As the tensions that existed from the very beginning of our Republic were heightened by territorial expansion, it became clear to some that a new political organization was needed. Drawing upon members of the dying Whig Party and disaffected members of the old Democratic-Republican coalition originally developed by Jefferson-Jackson, a new and invigorated political initiative was launched in 1854. According to disputed legend, it was all started in a white schoolhouse in Ripon Wisconsin … a humble origin story indeed.

This invigorated political organization separated itself from their Democratic counterparts along several dimensions. In today’s political climate, the new Republican Party would be considered the progressives of that era. They opposed slavery, encouraged innovation and change, and were willing to invest national resources to expand opportunities for all. For example, Vermont Republican Representative Justin Smith Morrill argued for an early form of progressive income taxation … ‘Nothing upon each man an equal amount, but a tax proportionate to his ability to pay.’ Republican John B. Hale, a Republican Senator from New Hampshire, argued Americans wanted to be taxed so that issues related to the common good might be addressed. That’s right. Republicans were the pro-tax party.

In the early 1860s, Republicans passed the first income tax (replacing in part regressive tariffs), the Homestead Act (distributing land to common people), the Land-Grant Act (expanding higher educational opportunities), the Dept. Of Agriculture (a federal department devoted to economic development), and the Pacific Railway Act (a large scale infrastructure investment that anticipated another Republican initiative, the National Highway Act, by almost a century). The new Republican Party also committed itself to promoting a stronger commitment to democracy, a belief in progress, and a rough equality of all (at least within the limits of that era).

The existing Democratic Party had a far different perspective on the ‘good society.’ They had an extremely hierarchical and rigid notion of the world. There were distinct classes of people designed by Providence to play certain roles in life, a view not far removed from the rigid caste system in South Asia. In 1858, Democratic Senator James Henry Hammond of South Carolina posed his mudsill theory in Congress. He argued that most people are designed and ordained to perform ‘menial duties’ because they have ‘a low order of intellect’ and ‘little skill.’ Slaves and impoverished whites fit this class of folk. Only a few in society were born to ‘that other class which leads to progress, civilization, and refinement.’ Of course, that would include the plantation owners that dominated Southern Politics and, to a remarkable degree, the nation as a whole.

In fact, wealthy Southerners were a tiny minority of the U S. Population. By 1860, the North had some 22 million of the nation’s 31 million people. Of the 9 million souls who lived in the South, 4 million were enslaved. While elite Caucasians (those with more than 20 slaves) made up 4 percent of the entire Southern population and 0.6 percent of the national population, they managed to control much of the national government (along with its key institutions like the Supreme Court and the Executive Office) at least up to the election of Abe Lincoln and this new Republican Party. Consider the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court that legitimized the 2nd class status of Black Americans.

We tend to view today’s political parties as representing core normative and ideological positions that each has held in perpetuity. Nothing can be further from the truth. In fact, with these two political factions firmly established by the 1860 election, we continued to see twists and turns over the next century and a half. The Republican Party tied themselves increasingly to the moneyed interests of the northeast in the latter decades of the 19th century while their Democratic opponents embraced fully the racist sentiments of a defeated post civil war South. Northern Democrats moved to the left during the Great Depression as Republicans, now fully wedded to laissez faire orthodoxy, lost their zeal for pro-active governance. The great political realignment of the 1960s and 70s rooted out the extraordinary historical tensions existing within and between the two parties.

Basically, Southern racists and conservatives left the Democratic Party to become Republicans while Republican progressives and moderates (mostly from blue states) were systemically purged from their party, a process that was not fully completed until the Trump takeover about a decade ago. At long last, we had two parties that reflected more or less coherent values and positions. For one thing, we had a Republican Party that emphasized limited government, individual freedom at the expense of collaborative progress, and a hierarchical view of society with overtones of authoritarian or strongman rule. In short, today’s Republicans are the Democrats of the 1850s.

The Democrats, on the other hand, now are the Republicans of that upstart Party that was initiated in the dynamics of the pre-Civil War era. They favor a more centralized government, are suspicious of any extreme laissez faire approach to economics, favor pro-active public responses to society’s challenges, and retain faith in a fully mature democracy. This last point clearly separates the two contemporary parties. Republicans seek to limit voting and generally constrain the exercise of public input into the electing of political leaders. They retain much of the suspicions about Democracy harbored by the Founding Fathers. Conversly, Democrats generally feel that a strong faith in the public is warranted and essential to preserving the American vision.

Hopefully, this brief discourse on politics in America has not been too confusing. 😬 I may go back and fill in important blanks in future blogs. For now, though, I wanted to get across a simple point … Our political tensions have a long and convoluted history. In fact, the major parties have exchanged positions on some of our core and salient historical disputes. However, these basic friction points never disappear even as they evolve and switch from one party to the other. In the end, they endure, going back to the very origins of our nation. Some even tap the original doubts about whether a Republic so conceived could last.

Perhaps that is why the 2024 election seems so important. On the agenda is a question seldom addressed with honesty. Can a nation of the people, by the people, and for the people endure. The Founding Fathers were not so sure. When Ben Franklin was asked at the end of the constitutional convention about what kind of government was being proposed. His alleged response was … a Republic, if you can keep it. It was almost lost in the past, certainly in the aftermath of Abe Lincoln’s election. It still might be lost on November 5. Even if the worst does not come to pass in the next election, we must acknowledge that some 40 percent or more of the American electorate appear willing to abandon democracy for some form of autocratic rule. The fate of the Republic will remain uncertain for some time.

People of my age, those who read at least, are familiar with George Orwell’s iconic work … 1984. He created a fictional and very frightening world where the rules of conduct had largely been constrained, twisted, or even reversed. Human behavior and individual freedom were highly restricted by a form of universal authoritarian oversight while thought was manipulated through systemic gaslighting (manipulating reality in ways that disorient observers. Nowhere was the oppressive mechanisms of control more transparent than in the corruption of language. In Orwell’s dystopia, freedom meant slavery, lies became truth, and black was white. Nothing was quite what it seemed, so an unquestioned authority was essential to keeping all things from flying apart. Only blind obedience could assuage the disorientation and paranoia intrinsic to this destabilizing reality.

Orwell, of course, lived and wrote during the height of what appeared to be an apocalyptic contest between seemingly irreconcilable views of the good society. On one side were authoritarian models (Fascist and Communist) while a range of Democratic models (including those mildly socialistic) posed an alternative, though these more reasonable alternatives did not always offer promising futures for a world seemingly bent on self- destruction at times. During his formative years, Orwell fought on the Republican or leftist side against Franco’s Fascists during the vicious Spanish Civil War of the 1930s. He was an idealist, driven by a vision of humans being able to develop in freedom and self-determination and thus capable of fully expressing themselves. It must have been disheartening to him when his own side engaged in destructive and nihilistic infighting over who was right and who would be in charge should they prevail in the end. The issue became moot when they were crushed. No wonder he became a master of portraying society in a most negative light. There were few models of enlightened leadership in his world.

Yet, both 1984 and his other iconic work, Animal Farm, have withstood the test of time. They have remained eloquent testimonials to the ever present dangers that overshadow our efforts to develop or sustain participitory methods of self-governance. Can we really perfect, as much as feasible, a democratic model of government, or will we inevitably succumb to the baser instincts embedded in the human animal. While we have a veneer of sophistication and self-congratulatory successes, doubts are ever present. That remains particularly true of the American experiment in democracy.

Humans, after all, are animals not all that advanced over their earlier frightened and vulnerable ancestors, those befuddled predecessors who huddled in small tribes for protection and mere survival. Look around, and you will still see residual evidence of instinctive primal fears that we cannot completely escape. Many of us still react irrationality to those who look, believe, and behave differently from the tribe with which we identify. That primal instinct embedded from eons of successful survival tactics has led to the rise of right-wing movements even in our oldest, most democratic nations. Attack the ‘other’ while circling the wagons around ones own people. It remains our go-to or default response. Above all, look to a strong man for succor and leadership.

And so, I’m sitting here pondering whether Orwell’s warning to future generations yet has currency. Should we still look to him as a prophet or were his futuristic visions merely exercises in imaginative hyperbole? Did he overstate his case for literary notoriety or did he, in fact, predict the threats we now face with uncanny prescience?

Obviously, we are in the midst of our quadrennial exercise in national self-abuse called our Presidential election. I’ve been living through these for almost seven decades (the 1956 election is the first I recall with any clarity). I can say without exaggeration that the last three contests have been qualitatively exceptional, with the stakes dramatically elevated. While it was oft heard that each election was THE most important ever, it just might be true now. The current contest arguably is the most important since 1800 when John Adams, after realizing that the electoral college voted to replace him as President with his arch political enemy Thomas Jefferson, merely got in his carriage and headed back to Boston. That election proved that the Constitution could work. Until that moment, the principles embodied in that document were merely words on paper.

For something like a decade now, the foundational premises of our government have been under increasing threat. Yes, the ‘movement’ conservative initiative launched some seven decades ago (the starting point is open to debate) now exercises control over one of our two major parties. Virtually all moderates have been purged from the Republican party as traitorous RINOs. With the success of the Trump phenomenon, they are ready to push the for the final denoument of a long-held dream … replacing a government of and by the people with the institution of a so-called unitary executive supporting a vision backed by a kleptocracy of super-wealthy, white males. Once firmly in power, all remaining substantive protocols supporting a functional democracy would cease to exist.

Is this nightmare a product of delusional hyperbole? Perhaps, but that has never been my style. I’ve never been a conspiracy oriented type, at least not until recently. Besides, many other sober observers are raising similar alarms. Just yesterday, Former Republican Congress person Liz Cheney, daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney, spoke with Kamala Harris in Ripon Wisconsin … the birthplace of the modern Republican Party back in 1854. In her remarks, she asserted that “… Trump attempted to stay in power by unraveling the foundations of our republic.” As the audience shouted ‘thank you Liz,‘ she added the following warning. “We cannot turn away from this truth.”

It is convenient to think that the existential threat to American democracy was confined to January 6, 2021, the day that exiting President Donald Trump encouraged HIS people to storm the Capitol to forcibly stop the electoral college from carrying out their routine Constitutional function. In a recently released legal brief, it was revealed that aides rushed in to tell Trump that his Vice President was in physical danger and might need to be rescued. His response was two terse words, ‘so what.’ The President was willing for his second in command to be hung by a rabid mob rather than lift a finger to help. If his naked ambition blinded him to the immediate plight of his second-in-command, what thought would get give to mere words on a document, even one that has purportedly guided the republic for nearly 250 years.

By this moment in time (1-6-21), Trump and his minions had long been engaged in thwarting the ‘foundations of our Republic’ to repeat Cheney’s words. Trump thought that the Presidency put him above the law. With increasing rasfness and a disregard for legal niceties, he began to refashion his administration into a semi-dictatorship. He told increasingly bold lies. He purged his administration of those not sufficiently loyal to him as opposed to their professional duties. He hired an acolyte to oversee federal hiring (John McCentee) and initiated a plan to change tens of thousands of civil servants to ‘schedule F’ positions. That would make loyalty to Trump the sole basis for keeping ones positions. Trump went after those functionaries in his own administration who might thwart his exercise of unchecked power (Attorney General Jeff Sessions, James Comey, several departmental level Inspector Generals etc.). He had his administration transparently issue what they called ‘alternative facts.’ Nothing foretold the dawn of Orwell’s dystopia more clearly than this disturbing fact. Finally, as reelection time approached, Trump nakedly sought to influence foreign leaders to help him stay in power, which led to his impeachment but not conviction (on party lines). This act was seen as so egregiously dangerous to the republic that it was outlawed by the Logan Act of 1799.

All of the above have been fully documented in court cases and legal briefs, Congressional hearings, and books and articles written by insiders who often witnessed such events. While the past is disturbing, the possible future is, to draw upon my most dire descriptor, downright Orwellian. Though Trump may be mentally declining, even he (and certainly those in his inner circle) recognize the mistakes they made last time around. Early in their administration, they appointed too many individuals who, while conservative, yet believed in their oaths of office and in the Constitution. They ascribed to the rule of law and to the limits on executive power. Many were purged because of their fidelity to these principles, but not soon enough to remain in power despite the last elections indisputable outcome. While Trump exercised a ferocious end game to stay in power, it proved not quite enough.

Next time around, if there is one, the same mistakes will not be repeated. Trump’s minions have already drawn up plans to eviscerate the independent civil service that goes back to the reforms of the 1880s. They will finish the job of bringing the levers of power into line including the judiciary, the military, the justice department, and those overseeing elections. Pay heed to the words of Trump himself when he promised Evangelicals that one more vote for him and they won’t have to worry about voting anymore. That is not an idle threat. That is the plan.

The blueprint for America’s future is laid out in Project 2025. It is a full agenda for replacing our participatory form of governance with an oligarchic model based on this neutral sounding term of unitary executive. Make no mistake about what that means … the introduction of a dictatorship. It would be the end of the American experiment as we have known it, and for which so many have sacrificed so much.

I would like to argue that, assuming a good outcome in November, the threat of an Orwellian dystopia is over. But no, V.P. candidate Vance stands ready to pick up the banner. He is smarter than Trump, far more educated, and equally as bankupt morally. He has already demonstrated that he can lie with Donald’s aplomb and stir up divisive hate by stoking fear of alleged immigrant hordes. More disturbingly, the tens of millions of MAGA conservatives won’t go away, nor will the billionaires with their limitless resources ready to create a society they can control for their own nefarious purposes. It is not over by a long shot.

George Orwell’s nightmare is not at an end. It has only just begun.

I can yet recall the political wars of my youth. They could be virulent and hard fought, but they seemed genteel in the light of today’s almost apocalyptic contests. Today, our politics seem more like the end days battles between good and evil, darkness and the light. We are not talking about minor disputes over the appropriate levels of taxation or seeking the correct balance between investments in private versus public goods. Those were the reasonable debates among principled combatants in the old days. No, today we struggle for the continued existence of a democratic Republic and the sustaining of our national unity while the world looks on in growing horror.

We’ve always had venomous anger in our politics. The sectional rage to preserve racial hegemony and apartheid, the rights movements of the 1960s (including deep frustrations and communal outbursts), and the anger vented by the young toward state-sponsored institutional violence in Southeast Asia and elsewhere as indigenous peoples sought their own forms of sovereignty are examples. At the core of governance, however, a certain set of common understandings prevailed. Enough decent people in government debated details within accepted frameworks of negotiation and compromise. We all accepted a Keynsian framework within which government would steer the ship of state. Extremes were avoided.

In many respects, politics today are different … visceral and raw. Disputes are based on emotion and premised on radically different views of reality. Even as late as the early 1990s, I can remember working with those of a Republican persuasion to work out compromises on welfare and human services issues. Sure, normative differences existed. But the dialogue was, for the most part, between sensible adults who referenced logic and evidence to advance differing opinions and perspectives. The Gingrich revolution of 1994 was a shot across the bow against that sensible world. For Newt, any compromise with the other side was treason. The reasonable Republicans from those days now just shake their heads in dismay … wondering what happened to their party.

The hyper-partisanship and polarization of today has many roots. The political realignment in the post Brown vs. The Board of Education world divided the political world into more homogeneous political entities. The Democratic Party drifted to the left and the Republican Party to the right (and then to the Hard Right). The GOP eventually purged almost all moderates from their ranks, though it took some time to achieve that goal. The political and normative divide gradually took on a geographic or spatial character. Conservatives reigned in southern states and the more rural states in the Western part of the country. The so-called progressives tended to be in highly populated, coastal areas. The areas of contention were reduced to several so-called swing states. Our antiquated electoral college (a residue of the Founding Fathers distrust of an untried concept of democracy and persistent fear of mob rule) shifted political battles away from a pure majority rule for deciding national elections. For over three decades, the Republican Party has garnered a national majority vote only in 2004.

I live in one of those swing states … Wisconsin. The spatial and cultural character of the political divide plays out here in a very clear way. The progressive vote is found in the more densely populated areas, while the MAGA vote is concentrated in the more rural and sparsely populated areas.

For example, if I were to drive around the State Capital, Madison, I would see a sea of signs like the one above. On the west side of the city, where I reside, nary a single Trump sign is found. Who lives in Madison? Well, it is a rapidly growing metropolis (about 300,000 in the city and 600,000 in the county) comprised of highly educated, professional types. The economic growth has been fueled by the prestigious University of Wisconsin and the spin-offs from the intellectual ferment of this bastion of research. Growing companies include such examples as Epic Systems (which controls the majority of medical data systems nationally and even abroad) and Exact Sciences and many other like hi-tech firms. They employ technically sophisticated people who think logically and function based on data and empirical research.

When you get out to the countryside, you see signs like the one below. Recently, my female friend and I drove up to her retreat on Green Lake about 75 miles northeast of Madison. As we drove though the bucolic countryside replete with dairy farms and corn crops, the dominant political preference was undeniable. All one could see were Trump signs, often large in size and brassy in their message.

Only when we drove through the smaller towns did we see sights like the one below … supporters of Harris. This was in Ripon Wisconsin, a town of less than 8,000 souls. Ripon happens to be the birthplace of the Republican Party (in 1854) when it was the upstart liberal entity replacing a dying Whig party. The new Republicans were the liberals … opposed to slavery and supportive of a stronger central government and more public investments in the common good.

The spatial dimension of our current political and cultural divide could not be clearer. The Dems really dominate in those areas where the population is educated and more sophisticated. My neighbors in west Madison are, almost universally, professionals with advanced degrees from the best universities. They had professional careers as doctors, engineers, lawyers, and academics. They lived in worlds defined by numbers and clear thinking. It is not surprising that the last Republican Governor (Scott Walker) went after the University of Wisconsin. He reduced state support, attacked University governance, and even tried to eliminate the iconic Wisconsin Idea where the University would work to solve social issues. Now, Wisconsin ranks 43rd among all states in their financial support of higher education. Only aggressive solicitation of other sources af extramural resources (something I did when there) has sustained the University as a first-class R-1 research university on the global stage.

The Republicans really dominate in rural communities. These are almost universally white and culturally homogeneous worlds. Anything or anyone that is different is viewed with suspicion. One of my favorite stories involves my late wife. Many decades ago (the 1970s), she was in charge of a study of the role of women in state service. While doing interviews of public officials throughout the state, she was driving toward the courthouse in a somewhat rural county. She was pulled over by the police. The officer started interrogating her. Exasperated, she asked what she had done wrong. Nothing, the officer replied. But I saw your ‘support the equal rights amendment (for women)’ sticker on your bumper and knew you were not from around here. In these areas, threat and danger are found everywhere.

These two worlds (urban and rural) operate within very different universes. Frankly, I cannot even fathom how those out in our lovely Wisconsin countryside see the world. Theorists posit that these folks are driven by rural, white rage or perhaps it is a sense of lost cultural identity and a sense of diminished societal hegemony. A fear and resentment seems to stalk the countryside but, frankly, I know too little about that world to make sense of it. Apparently, they want a strongman to come along and make things right again which, I fear, means doing something vengeful to folk like me (though I’m too old to care). I fear that a similar set of resentments led the Germans to accept Hitler in the early 1930s.

When we were up at my female friends retreat on the lake, she had to stop by the business of the mechanic who winterized one of her boats. Knowing that I had a Harris-Walz sticker on my car, she suggested I park a distance away where he would not see it. While a good mechanic, his understanding of the broader world hardly exceeds that of a child. According to her, he really believes that a Communist government would be instituted if the Dems prevail in the upcoming election. No amount of reasoning with him is possible, she informed me. Unfortunately, he is not alone in his paranoid views..

I fear that our tribal bubbles are congealing, the surfaces that separate us are becoming less permeable. After all, we have our own individual sources of information and input. There no longer is a Walter Cronkite to bring us common news. We mostly talk to people who agree with our views. And our instantaneous access to the world’s information enables us to cherry pick that which reflects and supports our priors. We are, in short, retreating into our own insular tribes. I fear this is a very bad thing. The consequences of this degree of separation can hardly be imagined, but it will not be positive by any means.