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The first coalition group at the heart of today’s Republican Party was the anti-New Deal folks who opposed the regulatory agencies and government economic engines implemented by FDT to combat the Great Depression. The second group were the racists who were not happy with the Civil Rights movement. I’m going to leave the racists aside today because instead of social policy I want to discuss explosive diarrhea and this is a gift of the former group.

The deregulationists have never stopped their crusade to remove government oversight and regulation from virtually all parts of the economy though I do think some of the driving motivation has shifted. In the less bad old days, they were genuinely concerned that a government with too much influence over economic matters, and significant oversight through official regulatory agencies would become enamored of its powers and eventually sap the liberty of the people. F.A. Hayak was one of the great proponents of this view. He wasn’t irrational but when I read his work, I do get the sense that fear of what might be overwhelms his ability to imagine any possible good outcomes that may also exist. Today’s regulation slashers are much more driven by pure profit motives. They want to let companies avoid any safety measures or quality testing because those things cost money. When they talk about it they claim these savings will be passed on to customers, but we all know this is not true.

Donald Trump has slashed so many of the programs and quality checks that oversee or food production and distribution process that according the FDA, since late June there have been over 50 food recalls. The most well known of these of course has been the doo-doo lettuce. Just in case you haven’t paid close attention, this lettuce was contaminated with cyclospora which causes very severe diarrhea. That’s not why I call it doo-doo lettuce though. See, the interesting bit is that cyclospora is only transmitted via fecal to oral transmission. That means there was poop on that lettuce. And it was human poop because humans are the only known host of cyclospora. How does human waste, in quantities large enough to affect products in at least 20 states, get on your lettuce? Well, there are two obvious answers and you’re not going to like either of them. The first is that perhaps the produce was rinsed/washed with water contaminated with human waste. Normally, farms and processing plants would be required to have their equipment inspected regularly to ensure this doesn’t happen but, well, we’ve seen how Republicans feel about regulations on business. We’ll just trust the foremen and floor managers to switch the hoses from poop water to clean water. Sure. The other possibility is that someone (likely plural in this case) pooped on the lettuce and it was not properly rinsed or washed. Now who in the world would go and crap on my lettuce? Well, the answer there would be the farm laborers working in the fields who are harvesting the lettuce because potty breaks are no longer required as they cost money. And, when you gotta go, you gotta go!

And this is just scratching the surface. Some frozen blueberries and guacamole have recently received the FDA’s highest level of food safety warning. Some sourdough bread had metal in it. Popsicles contained glass. A tomato soup was contaminated with listeria. The list goes on and on. Much like the poor folks who ate the crapped on lettuce. The unfortunate reality is that this problem goes far beyond the current disruption of our food supply. The Trump administration has been ordering deregulation and loosening of inspections on just about everything. The repeated falsehoods about vaccines and loosened recommendations on vaccine schedules have lead to a measles outbreak. In the last year the government has loosened or eliminated auto-emissions rules and power plant pollution controls, appliance water efficiency standards, endangered species protections, environmental impact reviews for oil and gas drilling, and rolled back financial regulations over banks while weakening the CFPB.

As you can see, this touches nearly every aspect of the economy which means it also has real impact on the daily lives of Americans. And in case you don’t see how the doo-doo lettuce example translates to these other areas of economic life, the impacts for real Americans are all bad. It’s good for businesses though. And those short-term profits are all Trump and his cronies are interested in. They don’t care about the environment or your hospital bills. They don’t care if your local bank squanders your savings because theirs is off shored anyway. Of the two broad ideological groups that make up the base of the Republican Party, the racists are surely the more dangerous in the long run. But let’s not forget all the good that government can do when it is run properly and let the deregulationists get away with killing us all in their own special way.

On the one hand, it’s really not a big deal. Trump’s order only applies to the Department of the Interior and instructs them to make the change on all official government maps and documents. As with his other renaming projects, beyond those in government offices who must comply, only sycophants and bootlickers will use the new name. Certainly not the people of upstate New York or Canada. Moreover, the change will only last on paper for about two-and-a-half years (look at me being optimistic). From this perspective, the move can be laughed off as the childish peacocking that it is so that we can focus on some of the more criminal things he has done.

Unfortunately, that isn’t the full picture. The problem with this particular vanity project isn’t the stupid new name. It is how it is reflective of a continuation, perhaps even acceleration, of this kind of behavior from the person who is supposed to be the leader of the free world. Think of the time, money, and resources that have been spent implementing and trying to stop Trump’s petty self-aggrandizement. The Gulf of Mexico, the reflecting pool, the Kennedy Center, the ruined semiquincentennial, the destruction of the East Wing, the gaudy gilded just about everything in the District. Imagine if all of this had been put into something useful, like governing.

This is why this executive order is actually a big deal. It is yet another distraction from the very real damage that the Trump administration is causing to the nation and the world. It is one more instance that is too easy to dismiss as the action of a crazy old man losing his mind. And every time we use that excuse for something that seems minor, we make it simpler to use the same logic towards everything he does. But Donald Trump is not implementing overtly racist immigration and law enforcement policies because he is a senile old man. He is doing it because he is a horrible person. He is not working ceaselessly to undermine confidence in our elections because he’s tired from staying up on social media all night. He does it because he is an authoritarian who is actively trying to create loopholes so that he can later exploit them. This is the real danger of Trump’s abuse of executive orders to taunt the smart kid on the playground.

So the next time Trump says he is renaming something, and there will be a next time, remember that no matter how stupid and meaningless it sounds, the act itself carries weight. It debases not only himself, but the office he holds and by extension all of us. It is all part of a larger effort to wear us out and break us down because he would prefer to be absolute ruler of a degraded nation he can manipulate for his own benefit than a true leader of a healthy democracy.

The Supreme Court’s summer season of announcing cases this year was a barrage of bad decisions. I’m not a lawyer or legal scholar but as I listened to those who are describing some of the cases and their outcomes, even I could recognize the nonsense. Based on the makeup of the court and the nature of many of the particular cases, my reactions generally fell into the shocked but not surprised category. The primary analytical principle behind the current Court is of course originalism and repeatedly listening to explanations of the Court’s reasoning highlighted for me how intellectually weak this process is. I spent a little time looking at the origins and development of originalism and have come to some of my own conclusions that may or may not be nonsense as well. What I seem to observe is that originalism starts off with the reasonable starting point that we should consider the meaning of the text at the time it was adopted. I think this is valid because words change meaning over time and some aspects of language creep could lead to dangerous legal doctrines. It fails however when it becomes ideologically rigid because the founders explicitly expressed that they wished to create a system that could be flexible and adjust to unforeseen – indeed, unforeseeable – changes in society that were sure to come. More concerning though than the concept is what I have seen in the application. Almost every major originalist argument I have read ignores or dismisses some of the core text of the Constitution it analyzes. How can you claim that the text of the document is the most important starting point and then haphazardly dismiss parts of the text? That we see this happen tells me that the ideological approach of originalism is not really an ideological position itself, but a utilitarian one adopted in order to manufacture the desired outcomes of a different ideological principle.

I want to provide an example of what I mean by this criticism but I don’t want to just rehash what those much more qualified than I have been saying all summer. So, instead of addressing more recent abominations, I’m going to go back a bit and look at how originalists on the Supreme Court have addressed the Second Amendment since guns have been in the news much lately. That means of course I must look at Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008). I’ve engaged in many interesting discussions about this case because my historical perspective tends to lead me to agree with the idea that the Second Amendment was intended to protect an individual right to keep and bear arms while I disagree with how Scalia got there and his arguments as to why. What is fascinating about Scalia’s analysis of the Second Amendment is that when he breaks it down into its prefatory and operative clauses, he does not flatly dismiss that the former includes the statement of purpose for the latter, to wit: a militia “necessary to the security of a free state”. Instead, he acknowledges this aspect of the text and goes on to say that since it doesn’t specifically limit the individual possession of weapons for other purposes, those other purposes were, and remain, valid. For Scalia, this specifically includes the unstated right to use a firearm for self-defense. He suggests that this is so because people at the time of the adoption of the amendment regularly carried guns and other weapons, used them for self-defense, and this was widely understood to be a permissible use. That understanding, and the lack of any specific limiting of the use of arms, allows Scalia to then ignore the prefatory clause in his application to constitutional interpretation.

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The hypocrisy embedded in this bit of mental gymnastics becomes evident later when we read more of his textual and historical analysis. Having already made it clear he intends to effectively ignore the acknowledged purpose of the Second Amendment; Scalia naturally begins this section of his opinion with a detailed explication on its operative clause. He begins by noting that when used elsewhere in the Constitution, the “right of the people” clearly refers to individual rather than communal rights and the same must be assumed here. In this I concur but my reasoning is not disconnected from the text’s prefatory clause as Scalia’s is. In the next section, Scalia engages in the clearest attempt to show that he has researched contemporary meanings and understanding by citing dictionaries from the late 18^th century to define verbs such as “keep” and “bear”. After much discussion on this matter and further historical comparison followed by some criticism of the dissent, Scalia moves on to the prefatory clause. This is my favorite part of the Heller decision because, after having already conceded that it is this clause which gives the Second Amendment its purpose, he proceeds to give it comparatively scant attention. Scalia differentiates the militia from the Army and Navy in a way that is not unreasonable but certainly not pleasing to those who would wish to limit application of the Second Amendment more than I might. It is in his definition and discussion [sic] of “well-regulated” that Scalia most fully represents the thesis of this essay. He states: “Finally, the adjective ‘well-regulated’ implies nothing more than the imposition of proper discipline and training.” At a glance I might be happy with this wording because I happen to believe that proper discipline and training are key elements to a mutually satisfactory solution to our nation’s still raging gun debate. Unfortunately, the phrase “nothing more” carries much more weight in the rest of his thinking. Scalia does not go on to define what this might be and further references to discipline or training are almost entirely in quotes as he cites sources for his opinion. Why admit that the purpose is for communal security and that this requires training and discipline, only to dismiss the importance of this clause in application to the law? If you can figure that out with something other than the belief that he had a predetermined outcome in mind, you’re smarter than I am.

So, when we are finished with Scalia’s breakdown of the text, we have a Second Amendment that protects an individual right to bear arms rooted in a benefit for communal safety but without any need for that possession to have any relation to public safety or security. I fail to see how an originalist intent on defining every key word and clause in a Constitutional amendment can then deny any weight in application to such a significant portion of it. I suppose the original meaning of those words isn’t quite as important. Cherry picking at its finest. Scalia’s failure goes further than this though. Early in his opinion he states that the “arms” referenced in the Second Amendment would have referred to more than firearms based on the common understanding and usage of the term at the time of adoption. Okay, I can live with that. Why then does he neglect other weapons throughout the rest of his opinion? If this individual right applies to more than just guns, why doesn’t he take the opportunity before him to also address state and federal regulations on other weapons? He does state that application cannot be limited to weapons that existed at the time so that he can ensure we all get to have semi-automatic rifles. But there is not whisper about knives. The modern switchblade was first patented a century after passage of the Second Amendment and yet the carrying of one is illegal in much of the nation. Many states also limit the blade length of knives that can be carried in public despite blades of many lengths having been common throughout the nation’s history. I understand why Heller wasn’t the opportunity to overturn these laws but for the sake of ideological consistency he surely could have at least opened the door by making a note of it. Why not take this step to emphasize that this isn’t just about guns?

I am further baffled at the dismissal of the prefatory clause in Scalia’s argument because of my own experience. When I was in the Army, I was not only permitted, but at times required to carry and operate a M-16. I can assure you that my access to the weapon was very well regulated. I couldn’t touch a rifle if I hadn’t qualified at the range to show that I could handle it both safely and proficiently. If this is important for our service members, why should it be any less so for the rest of the population. Those who remember some bits of the Revolution and fear the tyranny of a too powerful government will remind us that it was the ability of the populace at large to access and use weapons that helped us create and maintain our nascent republic. Scalia was aware of this as well and included it among his reasons for the need of a militia at the time:

There are many reasons why the militia was thought to be “necessary to the security of a free state.”… Third, when the able-bodied men of a nation are trained in arms and organized, they are better able to resist tyranny.

Here we see the importance of training once again. Except that Scalia never acknowledges that any kind of training requirement might be acceptable despite it being a clear part of the intended purpose of the right he seeks to protect. The weakness of Scalia’s orginalist argument then is not so much because what he does say is invalid but instead because of how consistently and readily he recognizes an original meaning or intent and then dismisses or ignores it when it does not suit his objective.

This essay was not born out of a desire to attack Justice Scalia or redefine the jurisprudence of the Second Amendment. I am certain it has fallen far short of both. Instead, my hope was to outline some of the key parts of a major originalist argument in order to show how that concept is philosophically hollow. Scalia and other originalists have claimed to divine the true meaning of Constitutional language by looking to the language as it is written and as it was understood by the common person at the time of its drafting. As a way of knowing what the text is supposed to mean, this has an air of plausibility until you see the entire argument and realize how much of the original text, along with its intent and understanding, is cast aside when it becomes inconvenient. As a historian I feel it is not only valuable, but critical, to look back at our founding texts through the lenses and understanding of those who drafted them. However, when we do so, we must recall that even the founders were not of one mind. It is no small irony that today’s originalist scholars and jurists are those who claim most to root their views in the understanding of the past and yet seem incapable of fully recognizing this fundamental fact. The irony is further compounded by the fact that these originalists carry conflicting traces of Alexander Hamilton and James Madison with them. Madison and Hamilton did most of the legwork of writing the Federalist Papers intended to persuade New Yorkers to join the new Constitution. In Federalist 34 Hamilton wrote that it was important for the central government to have strong powers to respond and adjust to unforeseeable crises. In Federalist 49 Madison wrote about the need for stability and consistency and not making changes too frequently or drastically. Today’s originalists tend to favor the strong and dynamic executive favored by Hamilton while preferring Madison’s hesitance to trust the people with the power to institute change too readily. Like Scalia did in parsing the Second Amendment in Heller, I’m sure they will reference Hamilton and Madison separately as convenient for their desired outcomes. In the end, we can know something of what the founders intended by looking at their extra-Constitutional writings and common understanding of terms and phrases, but it is no way to frame application of the law because it will inevitably include contradictions and those who embrace the approach find it all to easy to dismiss the parts that do not fit their argument. This tells me that they do not really care about the how in their method of gaining understanding. This is a frightening thought when we recall we are discussing the final arbiters of the meaning of the law in our country.

This has not been a sudden change of thinking on my part. My position on many of these specific issues have changed over time; this is simply my first real attempt to articulate the reasoning behind my thinking. Since it was a partial impetus for this essay, I’ll start with the Supreme Court. When Democrats began talking about packing the Court after McConnell’s stunt with Merrick Garland, I opposed the idea on the basis that further politicizing the non-political branch of government would only serve to further deepen the forces of polarization and degrade respect for the institution. I was wrong. As it turns out, nothing can do that more than the rulings of the Roberts Court in the decade since. Additionally, there is nothing sacrosanct, and certainly nothing Constitutionally limiting, about the number of justices on the Supreme Court. The size of the Court has fluctuated many times over two-and-a-half centuries. I have seen several proposals for how to expand the Court and I’m not sure which I feel is best. I am certain though that if we want the rulings of our nation’s highest court to be respected again, some form of expansion will be required. To argue that Democrats should not do so when they have the power to because it would politicize the Court is tantamount to accepting the damage done by McConnell’s blocking of Garland’s nomination and then his use of the exact opposite logic to immediately replace Justice Ginsburg. There is no logic in allowing one side to damage an institution and then suggest that the other should not use similar powers to repair that damage. The validity of the court’s functioning to uphold the rule of law and the Constitution is more important than who sits on it and certainly more important than how many justices sit on it.

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Both houses of Congress also require some significant changes to reestablish their value and respect as institutions that serve the public good. The list here could probably fill an entire essay so I will just address one simple change for each chamber. The most necessary simple change for the Senate is one that shares a similar history in my thought as that of expanding the Supreme Court and that is abolition of the filibuster. There was a time when I believed in the idea of the Senate as a great deliberative body. As such I felt a guardrail such as the filibuster that could prevent a small majority from running away with things was appropriate. What I learned was that I believed it because I wanted it to be true. The unfortunate reality is that it simply is not. Notice that as parts of the filibuster have been chipped away over the years there has been no catastrophic collapse in functionality, nor any dramatic improvement either. What we have seen is that the major recent loosening of filibuster limitations have been used to further politicize the courts and other politically nominated offices while it remains in place to stymie most legislation. This is cowardice at its worst, especially when defending what remains of the filibuster is done so in the name of “tradition” or “protecting the institutions of the Senate”. The Senate, and any of its self-imposed rules, only exist to serve the people. When they fail to do that, we owe them nothing, certainly not respect. Eliminating the filibuster is the simplest way to help meaningful legislation pass the Senate, which is, after all, the body’s primary purpose. They should do it and stop blaming a handful of their own members for any holdups. If a majority of the Senate believes in a bill, they should pass it and then put the onus on the House. Instead, they use the filibuster as a shield to avoid dealing with difficult issues. As I already stated, cowardice. Senators who refuse to abolish the filibuster because they are afraid of what the opposition may do in power without it are equally spineless. I submit that rather than this, their true fear is being held accountable for their votes on popular legislation. Without a filibuster, there is no ability to imagine they would have supported something if it had only come to the floor. Arcane rules that hinder advancing the general welfare of the citizens of the United States should not be defended by anyone.

The change I wish to address for the House is even simpler – make it bigger. Not the actual chamber, but the number of people who serve in it. The membership of the House of Representatives has been capped for almost a century, essentially because they got tired of arguing of what the number should be then and no one has had the courage to pick up that battle again. In the first Congress (elected in 1930) after the current house size was established the population of the average district was a bit over 260,000. Today that number is over 760,000. There is no good argument for allowing such under-representation. If asked, most House members would likely not admit that they simply don’t want to argue over the appropriate size of the House or that increasing the number of members would reduce their own influence. Instead they would probably cite logistical issues such as the size of the chamber, office space, and voting. Bollocks. The United Kingdom’s House of Commons has 650 members but the chamber only seats a bit over 400 (and that gets tight) and they’ve managed. Moreover, the number of members in Commons has changed multiple times just since 1950. There is nothing beyond cowardice and laziness stopping Congress from increasing the size of the House of Representatives to better represent the will of the people. (How and by how much is something I intend to address in a future post.) Once again, this gets to the heart of the matter. Like the Senate, the House exists primarily to pass legislation and serve the will of the people. When only a handful of districts are even truly up for grabs in each election and yet they are still mired in deadlock, there is no reason not to welcome new blood and embrace a new dynamic. The number 435(8) is as important as is the number 9, that is to say, it is not. The fact that no one today can recall a time when that was not the number of representatives does not add value to the arbitrary cap. What is meaningful is Congress that can function to pass laws and regulation necessary to promote law and order and the well-being of the people of the United States. The average citizen’s voice now has about one third the impact in determining their representation in the House as it did a century ago. People can feel that they are not being heard or listened to and it is beyond time to rectify the situation.

I could easily provide more examples, but I have chosen these few because they share the common characteristic that they are simple. One is just a rule in one chamber of Congress and the other two can be addressed with basic legislation. In a time when I see a lot of calls for things that require Constitutional amendments, I think it is important to remind ourselves that there is much that can be done more efficiently. I am not opposed to amendments per se, it is just that I feel we are in such dire straits that more immediate action should be prioritized. The simplicity is also important because it undermines much of the opposition to the proposed reforms. What remains can be reduced to different versions of respecting institutions or traditions. This is the excuse for inaction that must be eradicated. Our political leaders want to be treated with respect. I want to respect them. But a title does not earn respect, action does. As citizens, we do not owe any individual any amount of respect or deference because of their office. They are our employees. People who come into positions of power tend to value the institutions upon which that power is based. While understandable this is also an unprincipled position. When the institution, whether it be the courts, or Congress, or a silly rule ceases to serve the good of the people it was created to serve, it too no longer deserves our respect or veneration. The bleeding of the former into the latter is a key problem in our current predicament. We must draw the line now and emphasize the distinction. There is nothing holy or sacrosanct about the number of Supreme Court justices or members of Congress and we cannot allow our elected officials to continue refusing to make necessary changes by pretending that there is. We must remind them that it is the ideals the people and institutions were put there to implement and protect that are most important. We must force them to recognize that people and institutions that so not serve the will of the people, that do not advance the principles we claim our nation to based upon, have no value and do not deserve our respect. That the people have replaced and reformed them before and we will do so again if they continue to fail us. We owe the people in power and the institutions they occupy nothing if they do not use that power within the institutions to fulfill the ideals and the principles of the American Democratic experiment. Keeping things the way they are because it’s “the way its always been” is the worst possible outcome.

Think about a shallow pond. Knowing the body of water is shallow tells you there isn’t much to it while leaving ambiguities as to how safe it is. After all, you can drown in less than an inch of water. And you still have no idea what might be living there. Rather than it being torn apart by diverging parties or losing its weight in determining the balance of power, this shallowness is the better metaphor to describe the center in American politics. This is not to suggest that the people who legitimately occupy the center are shallow human beings. Rather than the people themselves, what I attempt to describe is the outsized attention this segment of voters get because of how their potential influence is perceived. It is those perceptions which I believe are mistaken and hope to do my part in correcting. This step is necessary in order to address the problems with the DSA. (Throughout this essay it will be important for readers to remember that I am referring to a specific organized party in the United States, The Democratic Socialists of America, and not the ideas of democratic socialism or social democracy.)

For many decades, American politicians have presented it as a matter of pride when they can boast that they have reached across the aisle to forge compromise with the opposition. When politics is vitriolic, congressional majorities are slim and unstable, and a majority of people from all over the political spectrum say they would prefer to see more of this type of cooperation, it makes sense that some politicians would see this as a winning strategy. For some individual candidates, depending upon their specific constituencies, it may even be correct politically. The problem arises when the idea gets applied to politics as a whole and the assumptions don’t carry over. Do people want Congress to work with each other more effectively to get more meaningful legislation passed? Of course. Does this mean they want more centrist candidates who they think will do this more effectively? Not necessarily.

So, what is the “center” in U.S. Politics? Well, that all really depends on your perspective. For much of the era covered by modern polling it would include most of the electorate because most Americans tend to have somewhat moderate views on most policy issues (especially compared to their European counterparts) and the distributions looks essentially like a standard bell curve. This view is what informs the strategy of those who want to maintain an appeal to moderates who they consider to be swing voters – more on this term shortly. This perspective has the serious flaw, however, of not reflecting how people actually vote. It assumes that this block of “centrists” or “moderates” are contemplating the issues and changing their votes between some elections. These changes are why this group is sometimes called “swing voters”. Unfortunately, this is not an accurate depiction of what is really happening. A deeper analysis of the data shows that very few people change what party they vote for. Indeed, the number who actually fit this common assumption is often statistically insignificant. Some will look at voting data and point out that this Democrat here got 4 thousand more votes this time and the Republican got about the same amount fewer and question how to explain that without suggesting 4 thousand people changed their votes. Well, the answer is quite simple: that data does not represent 4 thousand people but somewhere closer to 8 thousand. That wasn’t 4 thousand centrists changing their minds; it was 4 thousand inconsistent Democrats showing up when they had not before and 4 thousand inconsistent Republicans staying home when they voted last time. When you understand this interpretation of the data, you can then move on to the realization that these people who may appear to be moderates might actually have some radical views. It also gives the lie to the idea of the all important “swing voter”.

This is what I mean when I refer to the shallowness of the American center. Like the pond, if you are not poking at the data with a stick, the dangers of deciding whether to dive in can be hidden. If some of these unreliable voters are actually on the outside extreme of the party, playing to the center is more likely to alienate them than ensure their turnout. “The center” then, is a deceptive concept because it does not exist significantly in the way the term is typically used. It appears deep because of the way people describe themselves and how this aligns with a typical interpretation of voting behavior. When you view this behavior instead as I described above, you can see that the center is very shallow. Just as a shallow pond may be appealing for a summer dip but promises no fish, there really aren’t that many votes there. This can be seen by looking at rebellions within our political parties.

What Donald Trump rebranded as MAGA was previously the Tea Party. Both represent movements within the Republican Party to pull the party further to the right, away from the center. This is where I originally thought of using “hollowing”, but I remembered that those people were always pretty far right, they just pulled their politicians along with them. More recently, we see the Democratic Socialists of America attempting the same thing within the Democratic Party. In the same vein, these voters are not abandoning the center, they were never located there. They are becoming more active and vocal in expressing their desires that the party shift to the left. These desires are so strong in fact that they are willing to do so through an entirely separate organization. More on the implications of that later. What is important to understand now is that each of these movements are populist backlashes to their respective party leadership being mired in a worldview that required consistent appeals to a center that was mostly a mirage. Republicans learned this lesson, but only at the expense of the party being taken over by populist radicals. Democrats still have time to learn it without succumbing to the same fate.

Right now, I am not horribly optimistic. Democratic voters, like their counterparts on the right, want politicians who will fight for them, not for platitudes. People who want left-oriented policies enacted can intuit, even if they do not have the formal background to be able to explain it, that the slogans of many Democratic campaigns do not amount to action. More than intuition, they can see concretely that bailing out the banks did nothing to help everyday Americans. The banks are making record profits while people cannot afford quality housing. During his term, President Biden passed some of the most progressive legislation in the past 30 years. His greatest mistake, aside from choosing to run for a second term, was not embracing that progressivism and instead insisting upon a posture of bipartisanship. His policy goals were good but his politics about how to achieve them were bad. Another problem with Biden’s progressive achievements is that they were primarily towards long-term goals. This does not mean that they were not worth doing but simply that the energy was not used to achieve things that could notch quick political victories as well. The investments of the Inflation Reduction Act were important but they did not provide any quick signs of return on investment. This means they did not provide any continued political momentum and that they were also easily undone once Republicans were back in control.

This brings to light a further contrast we must revisit. Republicans and Democrats have been making promises for decades. There is a simple argument that Republicans have been far more successful in delivering on those promises. Today, many Americans are demanding substantial reforms to our health care system. President Obama made a significant step in delivering on this promise with the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Unfortunately, Republicans have been far more effective in keeping their promises to destroy it. While they were narrowly stopped from fully repealing the ACA, defunding the subsidies that made marketplace plans affordable has effectively put that access to coverage back out of reach for many who need it. Less than two decades after its passage, Obamacare now provides few tangible benefits to most. Rather than build upon its initial success, and use that momentum to do more, Democrats expected the program to speak for itself and then relied on compromising with moderates on other issues. Meanwhile, Republicans have plowed ahead with their promises to destroy and discredit the things they don’t like about American government, society, and the rule of law.

This last point brings us to an examination of the moral failing observed when insisting upon compromise or working across the aisle. It is true that the Venn diagram of showing the centrism of more entrenched Democratic Party leadership and “working across the aisle” is not a perfect circle. They both, however, represent a failure to let go of outmoded ways of thinking. This is what the rebellion of the DSA is truly about. I have already addressed why appealing to centrists or moderates is strategically ill advised – this center is shallow and thus, not where elections are won. The insistence on maintaining positions that leave open the opportunity for compromise solutions is also a poor strategy because Republicans have repeatedly shown themselves to be disingenuous (let’s put it more directly, they are rabid liars) in their negotiations and tactics. Furthermore, in their rapid shift to appease the nationalist right, Republicans have shown who they really are and that these are not people with which one should want to be seen compromising. Examples abound but I will only point to the rapidity with which states of the Confederacy Deep South moved to redraw congressional districts once they were told they could be racists if they just pretended it was partisan. There is no compromising with this mentality. There is no working across the aisle about human rights with people who think some humans don’t deserve the same rights as others. Maintaining a political strategy based on appealing to people who might identify with these ideologies shows a weakness of character that betrays the very values Democratic leaders claim to stand for.

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At last, I come back to the shallow center and what it means for what the Democratic Party must do if it wishes to remain intact. The Tea Party, and then MAGA, promised to force the Republican Party to the right or tear it apart trying. In this they have been fully successful. At the same time, they were also saying they wanted to take the party into well-charted territory that anyone with empathy should seek to avoid. In this they were also successful because Republican leaders embraced the former while assuming (or pretending) the latter was just boisterous posturing. Democrats still have time to avoid making the same mistake. The rise of the DSA as a meaningful force in the politics of the left must be seen as a reckoning. When people tell you who they are, listen. Many disaffected Democrats are drawn to the appeals and charisma of Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani. Why? Because they are promising not just new and bigger versions of things, but different ways of achieving them and voters are tired of the same old promises that never amount to anything. Politicians like Sanders and Mamdani are promising to fight in ways that most typical Democrats are not. If Democrats wish to prevent the party from following a similar path, if in the opposite direction, as the Republican Party, they must begin to recognize these things that voters want and admit the shallowness of the center. You cannot appeal to people who value things like paid parental leave and universal access to quality health care and remain in the good graces of people who think it is okay to gut the Voting Rights Act. That is too big of a tent and not one we should seek to maintain. The effort requires Orwellian levels of mental gymnastics. People are beginning to recognize this dynamic and that is why they are turning to the DSA. This should cause us all to pause a bit because the DSA is also telling us who they are and it would be dangerous to ignore them in the way that Republicans dismissed the extremism of MAGA radicals.

As I type this, I can already hear some of you sighing and groaning with complaints that this is not a fair comparison. Well let’s see what I’m talking about. On October 7, 2023, the day of the horrendous Hamas attack on Israel, the New York chapter of the DSA blamed the victims. Whatever we think about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians (abhorrent), or the almost reflexive defense of all things Israeli by mainstream American politicians (a result of one of the biggest strategic mistakes in U.S. foreign policy), this statement is not acceptable. Similarly, while the DSA did oppose Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the party blamed it on NATO. These are just two examples related to well-known international events that show how the DSA has shifted away from democratic values. The organization has been around since the early 1980’s with the expressed intent of pulling the Democratic Party to the left, but this move away from democratic principles is much more recent. The rapid increase in national popularity of more progressive policies sparked by the 2016 Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, sparked a major increase in interest in the DSA. This new wave of membership is what led to its radicalization. Another early sign of this radicalization was a 2018 open letter, signed my many groups and individuals within the DSA, condemning Representative Alexandria Ocosio-Cortez for recognizing Israel’s right to exist. The response to the Oct 7^th attack sparked many long-time members to leave the party. In their explanation for doing so they stated:

In our judgment, a moment of truth has arrived. The events of the last weeks in Israel and Palestine, and the responses of national DSA and many of its local chapters, bring us to the painful conclusion that today’s DSA has driven itself beyond redemption. In a moment of crisis, it has been found entirely wanting in its dedication to the moral principles that are the foundation of democratic socialism. DSA’s leaders, who are the public face of the organization, lack the political and strategic acumen needed to navigate a perilous moment fraught with danger. The positions they have taken on behalf of the organization lack basic human empathy and solidarity.

And:

In its inability to distinguish between acts of resistance to unjust and oppressive rule and acts of terror against civilians, and in its confusion of authentic striving for national liberation with theocratic, fascistic crimes, DSA has shown that it has become completely unmoored from the moral and political foundations of democratic socialism.

In its political blunders and disastrous handling of this moment of crisis, DSA leadership has tarnished the reputation of democratic socialism and threatened the precious political standing of elected officials who have been DSA’s friends and members. This leadership has shown a constitutional inability to function as responsible stewards of the organization.

The failure of members to abide by harsh litmus tests have led to calls for expulsion (here and here). The party platform also calls for government takeover of some corporations (without specifying which or explaining in any detail why). I hate to pull the old historian’s trope, but we’ve seen this before. Socialism in this form, government control of the means of production, does not work. It is objectively bad for the people and the economy. Without detailed explanations of how this time will be different, any group suggesting otherwise should be kept at more than an arm’s length.

Much of this may be a surprise to many readers. In some ways, I hope so. Above, I repeated the sage advice of old that when people tell you who they are you should listen and applied it to the Democratic Socialists of America as a warning. I have just presented some of the specific reasons I must come to this conclusion. It is also fair to say that this is not how they generally present themselves on the campaign trail. In this way they are less like MAGA and more like the Tea Party that preceded it. The reason we must be cautious is that most of those Tea Partiers had said all the awful things more privately before. The examples above show that many in the DSA have embraced policies and tactics that are not aligned with American democratic values. It is arguable that the organization’s intent is no longer to move the Democratic Party to the left but to destroy it.

The only people who can stop this from happening are those within the Democratic Party. The failure and unwillingness of the party establishment to recognize the shallowness of the center is what has allowed the rise of the DSA in its current form. To stop their party from being broken, or rendered into something unrecognizable, Democrats must embrace an attitude of fighting for the people that they have not yet shown an ability to sustain. They must remember that some of the greatest achievements in the Party’s history came at times when they were confronted by challenges from the left and were able to fend them off. No one is denying that defeating the radical right is of the utmost importance. What is being questioned is how to do that. Old guard Democrats are saying the path lies in keeping the big tent open for centrist or moderate conservatives to win those swing voters, and/or be able to work with moderate Republicans in Congress. They are wrong. There aren’t enough people who fit that definition to consistently win the majorities they need and self-proclaimed moderate Republicans are the ones who believed Donald Trump had “learned his lesson”. The DSA argues that the path to defeating the far right (and they include centrist Democrats in this category) is by using the weapons of the far left. They are wrong for different reasons. Because their appeal is a fundamentally populist one, they could theoretically win over angry MAGA voters who care less about specific policy than they do about the populist toned message. The reverse of this happened in 2016 when many Bernie Sanders supporters voted for Trump in the general election. The DSA strategy is wrong because this kind of populist coalition is not sustainable and the policies they wish to enact would be just as damaging to the American economy and to our democracy. The answer that does the most good for the people, and potentially salvages our system of government, is for mainstream Democrats to pull their heads out of the sand and realize they are trying to compromise with the wrong people. Many, likely most, people want many of the basic policy ideas DSA candidates speak about. Embrace them. Advocate and fight for these policies. Compromise with these people who just want meaningful reform instead of centrists who don’t exist or Republicans who cannot be trusted. Democratic Party leaders and candidates must abandon the shallow center, because whatever else it may hold, it is shallow and thus does not have many fish, and turn towards the emerging left before it fully embraces radicalism in the way that the populist right has.

It is important to examine how we perceive party success from this perspective because they have fundamentally different objectives that are achieved in different ways. One of the things that has been a core feature of the Republican Party since WWII is opposition to the administrative state created by the New Deal. When the party began to gain controlling power in Congress after a long period of sustained Democratic control, it used that power to enact long promised reforms. As one would expect, when Democrats control Congress, they then work to enact (or sometimes, reenact) their vision and campaign promises. In contrast to Republican distaste for government involvement in the economy or programs designed to provide aid and support to people in need, Democrats tend to believe that government can be a force for good in people’s lives and seek to strengthen these roles. What this amounts to then is a back and forth between one party who wants to weaken government and one which wants to strengthen it. This then impacts how people perceive the parties’ success in delivering on their promises because it is much simpler and faster to break something than it is to repair or build something.

I think this factor is not given enough weight in much analysis of the relative success of Republicans and Democrats. American voters have short attention spans and expect quick action and fast results. Those expectations are much easier to meet when the promise is “I’m going to break this vase” than when it is “I’m going to fix this vase that guy broke”. “I’m going to create an entirely new vase and build a mantle for it to sit on” is a task of an entirely greater magnitude. It is also more difficult to do the big things Democrats want to do without full control of government while significant breaking can be done with only partial control. Since 1995, Democrats have only had a trifecta (control of both house of Congress and the Presidency) for four years, and these were not consecutive. What this amounts to is a political environment where one party, Republicans, can achieve many of its goals through obstruction and then point to Democrats’ inability to pass legislation as a failure during the next campaign. Meanwhile, Democrats must use virtually all their leverage to pass something meaningful like the ACA, just to see it almost immediately weakened and undermined.

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The whole paradigm plays into another consistent Republican talking point – that things should be left to the private sector because the government is inefficient. The thing is, government does not have to be inefficient, but it often becomes so when Republicans cut budgets and slash programs. We also must deal with the inconsistencies that come with this back and forth which only drives further erosion of trust in government. The real knife twist of the way this all plays out is that not only is it simpler for the party of breaking stuff to do their breaking, the simpler political rhetoric tends to fall in their favor as well. This is not to suggest that they are correct or more accurate. In fact, Republicans are clearly disingenuous in their statements regarding what is and is not working in government. It was Republicans, with a trifecta, who refused to continue ACA subsidies. Then, when millions of Americans could no longer afford health coverage, it was Republicans who pointed to the Democratic failure of the ACA.

Democratic candidates and party leaders must do a better job of communicating these realities to their constituents. The most important part of this strategy will be a simple openness that many of the things they wish to do will take time to implement, and longer for people to realize the effects. As the progressive wing of the party continues to gain more influence, this will be even more important. One of the key issues that resonates with this group is tax reform. The progressive manifestation of the concept seems to be a preference for a wealth tax (a poor idea). Writing this legislation in a way that can pass both houses of Congress, get signed by the President, and withstand Constitutional scrutiny, will take quite a bit of time. If passed, it wouldn’t go into effect until the next fiscal year (at best) and the government wouldn’t have any new revenue from it for at least several months after that. By then another election would almost certainly have taken place without the people seeing any tangible results implemented. And this is just one issue.

As the voice of progressives continues to grow within the Democratic coalition, consistency in explaining realistic timelines while advocating for reform will be of utmost importance. I say this because it is primarily among self-styled progressives that I see the trend of asking candidates what they will do on “Day One”. This amounts to a lot of different promises of what will be accomplished on day one. I fear that “Month Two” reassurances that we are still working on it in committee will amount to little. Voters need to be told more up front about how the sausage is made. Democratic candidates who make “Day One” promises are setting themselves, and the Party, up for failure. Maybe not in this election, but certainly in the next.

A better strategy for Democrats would be to talk about what they hope to propose during this term, knowing it is likely to go nowhere, so that they can ask for greater support to try again. At this point in the summer, it seems quite likely that Democrats will regain control of the House starting in January. There is even a reasonable shot of taking back the Senate as well which increases the chance of passing meaningful legislation. The problem is that Donald Trump will still have the veto and it is not likely Democrats will be able to override that veto. They should begin acknowledging this now, during this campaign. Tell voters the bills they want to propose and pass, acknowledge the difficulty of getting them through both houses, and then acknowledge the likelihood that most of the most transformative proposals will be vetoed. Then do those things. Pass good legislation wherever you can. If it doesn’t make it through the other chamber (probably the Senate) say: “Give us more votes over there next time and we’ll pass it again”. Something popular passes both chambers and gets vetoed say: “Give us both chambers and a President who will sign this and we’ll pass it again”. Then, in 2029, with control of both houses of Congress and the Presidency (Inshallah), do those things and remind Americans: “Hey if you don’t want this undermined and de-funded, be sure to vote for us again next time”.

The point is, because Democrats are the party that wants to make government work for the people, showing the people that they can actually do so takes longer and a more sustained effort. They need to accept this fact, wrap it into their messaging, and show the American people what can happen when they put people willing to make positive change in charge for more than two years at a time. It is an experiment in patience and consistency, but it is what needs to happen if the Democratic Party is not going to collapse under the weight of its own unkept promises.

The circumstance I fear is not that Democratic voters will demand Congress stop reauthorizing the AUMFs of the War on Terror, that should have happened long ago. Nor am I concerned about a serious reconsideration and rearranging of the U.S. relationship with Israel and the associated military aid. That too, should have happened long ago. What I do fear is that significant victories towards these priorities will create momentum that will be difficult to restrain. While working to meet public demands to improve lives at home and restrain unnecessary involvement in foreign conflicts, Democratic leaders who understand the importance of continuing to project U.S. influence abroad will have to ensure this critical aspect of American affluence is not undermined.

In the decades since WWII, it has been the U.S. Navy that has guaranteed freedom of the seas for the world. This along with some strategically located Army divisions has not only prevented a WWIII but is also the linchpin of American economic growth and success during the same period. It can be true that the benefits of this economic boom were not equitably distributed and also true that the system that allowed it to happen should be kept largely in place. The hockey stick of U.S. income growth and accumulation of wealth is a function of domestic tax policy, not one of our role in keeping the oceans open for free trade. If we cease to do the latter, the economic growth needed to reform the former will also disappear.

There has been a great deal of backlash to the globalized world. New immigration patterns have created a variety of problems around the world. Governments and companies have not always made the best decisions and have not always foreseen some of the negative downstream effects (or sometimes dismissed or ignored them when they were predictable). In the U.S., outsourcing the manufacture of consumer goods made these items more affordable but also cost U.S. workers higher paying jobs that did not require a college education. People blame the companies for using the cheap labor, but they also would have complained about the prices had the production remained stateside. The true failure was in not replacing those jobs with others in emerging sectors. The U.S. relied too long on foreign production of critical components for new technologies. Now, we lack the pool of skilled workers and baseline manufacturing to produce things like computer chips that are critical for national security and much else in the basic mechanisms of the modern economy. Much of the angst from those frustrated with what they see as U.S. interventionism is directed towards our activities in the Middle East related to oil. As we inevitably shift towards greater use of renewable energy, despite much entrenched power to avoid this, and the fact that the U.S. has become “energy independent”, petroleum prices operate on a world market and domestic costs will continue to be impacted by what happens in other major oil producing regions. Even if it manages to reshore some critical manufacturing, the U.S. will also continue to rely on foreign supply chains because the raw materials come from all over the world. Those supply chains can only be protected by being involved in the world and keeping shipping lanes open.

The simple fact is that in order to achieve many of their domestic policy objectives, those who seek to rein in the role of the U.S. military around the world will also depend upon the economic environment shaped by that very projection of power to have any hope of achieving them. The globalized world, love it or hate it, is not going away. No nation has all the resources it needs to be self-sufficient and compete in a modern economy. Democratic leaders who understand that will need to communicate these realities clearly and concisely. They must ensure that what is starting off as a reasonable call to reprioritize does not turn into a tidal wave of isolationism.

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Even this revolution did not end outside intervention in Iranian affairs. Iranian assets abroad were frozen and U.S. sanctions imposed almost immediately in 1979. In 1984, the U.S. designated Iran a state sponsor of terrorism which brought on more sanctions. And so on. Then, in 2015, the U.S. and Iran signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) trading limits on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for release of some of its frozen funds and sanctions relief. To many in Iran, JCPOA represented the greatest capitulation since the Treaty of Turkmenchay. It is also the agreement tossed aside by Donald Trump in his first term. It is worth noting that according to independent analysts who had access to effectively determine such things, the agreement was working quite well at the time.

Fast forward to 2025 during his second term and Donald Trump insists, along with Israel, that it was necessary to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Something which they had agreed not to pursue under JCPOA and which international monitors had previously been able to effectively monitor. The motives behind the 2026 joint U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran seem less clear and much more malleable. Fortunately, a full assessment of those is not important for this analysis. What is important is what has and has not happened since. The most important thing that did not happen was the collapse of the Iranian regime despite the assassination of the Supreme Leader and many other top figures. What did happen is that Iran showed what many already knew to be true, that it could effectively shut of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz in direct confrontation with the U.S. Navy. Those who have been involved in working with or against Iran and who are familiar with the facts on the ground (or water) already knew this to be the case, but its demonstration is still a powerful turning point in showing the world who really holds which cards. Iran also stood firm in the face of Trump’s demands to unconditional surrender and to reopen the strait without negotiations. Trump, for his part, made many demands and issued many very strong threats. He received no concessions and followed through with few of the more serious threats.
And then suddenly, just within the last week, we finally have a deal. It turns out that we have a deal to talk about the real deal. What the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) shows is that when it comes to capitulating, tables have turned and shoes are on different feet. If this is the outline guiding negotiations for a permanent peace settlement, the United States has achieved none of its stated aims in engaging in the conflict. It is important to look at some of the specific points and address their implications.

1. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America, and their allies in the current war, by signing ‌this MoU (Memorandum of Understanding), declare the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon, and undertake from now on not to initiate any war or any military operation against each other, and to refrain from the threat or use of force against each other, and ensuring the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon. The final Deal will confirm the permanent termination of the war on all fronts, including in Lebanon, and other provisions of this paragraph.

This is boilerplate peace agreement stuff for the most part but the inclusion of the clause “including in Lebanon” is remarkable. It is obvious that Iran would seek to include a cessation of hostilities in Lebanon. What stands out is that the U.S. was so pressured to reach an agreement, any agreement, that it conceded to this inclusion even though we are not the ones fighting in Lebanon. The implication is that we will rein in Israel’s actions there. Israel’s response thus far does not indicate it has any intention of withdrawing its troops or halting its efforts in Lebanon. When Iran is able to persuade Hezbollah to comply if not attacked, and the U.S. has no such influence over Israel, which nation will appear stronger? A net loss for the U.S.

4. Immediately upon the signing of this MoU, the United States of America will begin the removal of its ​naval blockade and any disturbances or impediments against the Islamic Republic of Iran, and will fully end the naval blockade within 30 days. During this period, the traffic of vessels will be in proportion ⁠to the numbers of pre-war traffic being restored by the Islamic Republic of Iran. The United States of America further undertakes to remove its forces from the proximity of the Islamic Republic of Iran within 30 days after the final Deal.

5. Upon the signing of ​this MoU, the Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge for 60 days only, from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman and vice versa. The traffic of commercial vessels will immediately ​start and, considering the need for removing the technical and military obstacles and de-mining by the Islamic Republic of Iran, will be instated within 30 days. The Islamic Republic of Iran will conduct dialogue with the Sultanate of Oman to define the future administration and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz, in discussion with other Persian Gulf littoral states in line with the applicable international law and the sovereign rights of coastal states of the Strait of Hormuz.

The contrast between these two points is also critical to assessing who is walking away with what might be called a victory. In point 4, the U.S. is to “immediately” begin removing its naval blockade and prepare to remove forces from the “proximity” of Iran. It will be interesting to learn how “proximity” is defined in the final agreement. The timeline on Iranian obligations in point 5 are much less pressing. They “will make arrangements” using their “best efforts”. Much more wiggle room there. And in outlining the final determination of passage through the Strait of Hormuz and Persian Gulf, the United States is left out. This is a significant assertion of a form of regional sovereignty at the expense of the previous naval hegemony of the United States.

6. The United States of America undertakes with regional partners to develop a definitive, mutually agreed plan with at least USD 300 Billion for the reconstruction and economic development of ​the Islamic Republic of Iran. The mechanism for the implementation of this plan will be finalized as part of final Deal within 60 days. All required licenses, waivers, and permissions needed for the relevant financial transactions will be granted by the United States of America.

It is not specified which nations are included among these regional partners or how much each of them will be expected to contribute to the proposed $300 billion reconstruction fund. It is also unclear if any of these supposed partners were consulted before this agreement was reached. What is clear from the text is that the U.S. is the party responsible for ensuring it happens.

7. ​The United States of America undertakes to terminate all types of sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the United Nations Security Council resolutions, i.e. IAEA Board of Governors resolutions, and all unilateral U.S. sanctions, primary and secondary, in an agreed upon schedule as part of the final Deal. ‌The Islamic Republic ⁠of Iran and the United States of America acknowledge the critical importance of the sanctions termination issue above mentioned and express their intentions to immediately address these issues in the negotiations in order to achieve mutual agreement on them.

In addition to the regionally funded economic development fund, the U.S. appears to be solely responsible for ensuring all sanctions on Iran, including those imposed by international agencies, are lifted.

8. The Islamic Republic of Iran reaffirms that it shall not procure or develop nuclear weapons. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America have agreed to resolve the disposition of stockpiled enriched material pursuant to a mechanism that will be mutually agreed upon, in accordance with the schedule mentioned in paragraph seven with the minimum methodology to be down blending on site under the supervision of the IAEA. The two Parties also agree to discuss the issue of enrichment and other mutually agreed matters related to the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear needs, based on a satisfactory framework being agreed upon in the final ​Deal. The final Deal will confirm the provisions of this paragraph. ​The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America ⁠acknowledge the critical importance of the nuclear issues above mentioned and express their intention to immediately address these issues in the negotiations in order to achieve mutual agreement on them.

Point 8 is sure to be the one the Trump administration focuses on. It’s right there; Iran is promising not to develop nuclear weapons. That will be the ride or die for Trump declaring his victory. He will of course ignore the key word being “reaffirms”. This was of course something Iran already agreed to under JCPOA so it is conceding nothing by stating so again. The language of this point also does not ensure the level of international observation and monitoring that was provided by JCPOA.

9. Pending the final Deal, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America agree to maintain the status quo; the Islamic Republic of Iran will maintain the current status quo of its nuclear program and the United States of America will ​not impose any new sanctions and will not deploy additional forces in the region.

This point is a real kidney punch to the United States. Simply stated it asserts that Iran will maintain its nuclear program and the U.S. won’t do anything about it or send more troops to the region.

11. The United States of America undertakes to make fully available for use the frozen or restricted funds and assets of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Upon the implementation of this MoU, the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran will mutually agree on the procedures related to the release of these funds during the negotiation. Such funds, whether retained in the original account or transferred, shall be made fully usable for payment ⁠to any ultimate ​beneficiary designated by the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The United States of America undertakes to issue all necessary licenses and authorizations accordingly.

Point 11 will be a particularly bitter pill for Iran hawks and neoconservatives to swallow, if they can bring themselves to admit what is written in plain language. The primary talking point in their railing against JCPOA was that it released $1.7 billion in Iranian funds. The sum encompassed in the assets addressed here is somewhere in the neighborhood of $24 billion.

After examining the negotiating points and assessing the real outcomes on the ground and at sea, it is reasonable to assert that this MOU amounts to nothing less than a capitulation on the part of the United States. After centuries of forced concessions, humiliating treaties, invasions, and intervention with domestic leadership and government by the West, Iran has now flipped the script. What started as another Western attempt to impose its world view and priorities upon Iran has turned, in just a few months, into an utter embarrassment for the United States. Some nuclear facilities were bombed, and several key leaders were killed, but the regime survived – possibly emboldened – with a stronger hold on domestic power, and the President of the United States has signed a paper saying Iran will maintain its nuclear program. Iran’s history is ancient and its citizens have a strong sense of national identity. Iranians will be more aware of the historical change than most Americans. This MOU will be seen as a clear victory for Iran and bolster Iranian nationalism. Even the great many Iranians who despise the current regime do not necessarily have feelings of endearment for the United States. Moreover, many of those who most despised the despotic rule of the Mullahs have already been killed or imprisoned. U.S. attempts to intervene in and control or influence the government of Iran have failed in the past and this one has failed spectacularly. None of Trump’s stated war aims were going to be achieved with the strategy and tactics he sought to achieve them. When faced with the domestic and international consequences of his foolishness, Trump blustered and peacocked but ultimately, he capitulated.

Will Rogers once said: “I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.” It is difficult to pinpoint the exact date, but it was probably in the early to mid-1930s and historians broadly agree the attribution is legitimate. Ninety years ago, one of the great humorists of his time (all time) joked that the Democratic Party was unorganized. Today, as the nation faces the greatest challenge to the integrity of its constitutional system since the Civil War, worried observers in the party lament the imperfections of a Senate candidate which, I argue, is a function of the same ailment Rogers described so long ago. There have been a lot of takes regarding what is going on with Platner’s recent encounter with controversy. Whether you prefer the timing of hit piece as distraction perspective or the party factions view, clutching pearls over the new information and wishing for a better option now is missing the forest for the trees.

The closest the typical voter gets to choosing who their November candidate will be is the primary and precious few take advantage of that. Even then, their options are limited to those who put their name on the ballot. The problem as I see it, is not that Democrats don’t have enough good options but rather that the Democratic Party does not invest in providing them. I don’t mind a broad-based party with some factions that have different parties. That can be a healthy trait because it keeps the primaries meaningful and it keeps intra-party discussion meaningful. What is problematic however is when a party lacks leadership that has a coherent vision and strategy to recruit, train, and promote qualified candidates.

Democrats like to complain about their leadership and other members a lot. You might say it is a defining feature. I’ve got mixed feelings about some of this complaining and have engaged in it myself at times. On the one hand, unity in Congress matters when confronted with the type of threats we face today and party leaders have not been great at creating or maintaining that consensus. At the same time, a little intra-party debate prevents acquiescence to the status quo. Democrats have also had a problem in agreeing on litmus tests for particular policy positions. This is difficult enough on complex issues but even more so when you aim to be the big tent party. But none of this has anything to do with the as yet unelected Graham Platner.

What really gets my goat, and what I believe represents an even greater failure of leadership, is the lack of investment by party leadership – this does not just mean titled leaders in Congress – in developing another generation of leaders. To those wishing they didn’t have to choose between Platner and Collins (seriously, flawed or not, this is a simple choice), the time to register this complaint is not two weeks before the primary and those to whom it should be directed are not media outlets. The time, for the 2028 elections, is now (okay, maybe December), and the people you should be directing those views to are the party leaders. Most importantly, the message needs to be more substantive than just one of ‘we want better choices’. Hell, those leaders didn’t know about these issues with Platner until they read the same stories we did.

And that is the real problem. Party leaders at the national, state, and local levels have virtually no stake in who is running for office until their name is on the ballot. This leads to inconsistent ideological perspectives and difficulty maintaining intra-party cohesion. What I am suggesting is that the Democratic Party should have people connected to leadership who are responsible for keeping an eye on potential talent and future leaders, engaging with them early in their careers to vet their interest and qualifications, and helping to promote their public profiles. What I am absolutely not suggesting, is that they should restrict access to who can be on the ballot. The problem isn’t that there were four candidates in the Maine Senate primary (Did you know that? I didn’t until I fact checked to write this.), the problem is that no one at any level seemed to be aware of Platner’s potential issues until they were making headlines. Platner’s problematic texting and questionable tattoo did not need to become the dramatic headlines they did. One, if he had been someone the party was connected with earlier, the tattoo would have been seen and a coverup suggested before the coverup had to be explained away. Two, if he was an outsider candidate running against others who did have more significant party connections, people outside of Maine might know some of those folks’ names right now because party leaders would have more invested in supporting them.

I want to take some time to clarify what I am arguing here. Yes, I do think Democratic voters would be better served if party leadership were involved in developing new candidates and leaders. No, I do not want them to establish purity tests or control who can run. I am not advocating strict party line issue consistency. In a nation as large and diverse as ours, that would be impractical. What I am suggesting is that voters would be well served by a cadre of candidates whose ideological consistency they could depend on and trust. This is also a matter of good politics. Part of the reason party support is needed is to ensure there is someone for whom Democratic voters can cast their ballots. In this year’s state house elections, Georgia has 20 seats uncontested by a Democrat. In a state that has two Democratic Senators, went for Joe Biden, and has an important Senate race this year, every vote counts. Surely these are deep red, rural districts, with little chance of a Democratic victory. But the other side of that coin is that these are also the places most likely to vote based on local issues and local priorities. If you give the few local Democrats someone local to vote for, the chances of them showing up to vote increases and the chances of them also voting for Ossoff are almost certain. In a state where Trump begged the Secretary of State to find 12,000 votes, a slight shift in these districts and a few cities could make the difference.

Okay, I got sidetracked onto a personal issue – contest every freaking race every freaking time - time to get a little back on track. The main point I hope to make is that party investment, and I mean by the national, state, and local party apparatuses, in the development of candidates would help prevent moments of potential crisis like that seen by Platner’s campaign these past weeks. Beyond that, it would increase the number of elected officials who have something invested in the continued success of the party. The party should not be the only thing that matters but if the attachment is based on shared values rather than simple maintenance of power, it promotes a consistency that Democrats have sorely lacked. It also helps those who want to participate more but don’t have the time to read primary campaign literature to know where their choices stand in relation to the party. One way it achieves this is by helping other elected officials know who these new candidates are and where they stand to facilitate endorsements. Aside from legislation itself, if there is one thing elected officials should have an opinion on, it should be who will be joining them in the ranks.

Many critics of Democratic leadership are focused on specific issues. Joe Biden and Merrick Garland should have gone after the crimes of Trump’s first term more. Agreed, but unfixable now. Chuck Schumer and others shouldn’t blindly support Israel or take AIPAC money. Also agreed, but a much more complicated thing to address (maybe I will try some day). What I am discussing here is a more systemic, long-term issue. This isn’t about knowing how every candidate will vote on every issue. It is about knowing that, with some healthy internal debate, there will be some ideological consistency among elected officials and knowing that when it is time for a minority/majority leader to step aside, there will be options to fill the role(s) rather than a designated successor. Nothing stymies the democratic spirit more than knowing who the next boss is going to be before the previous is out of office. Nothing prevents that better than having a large cohort of known and qualified candidates to compete for the role. Achieving this requires a level of organization that would make Will Rogers’ commentary pass from the world of astute observation into that of comedic anachronism.

Another complicating factor is that this was not a unilateral effort. While it’s still impossible to be certain how much the true instigator of the war was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it is safe to say his influence was significant. Israel has been happy to let the U.S. take most of the international credit (and blame) for the Iran war while using it as a cover to launch its own attacks in Lebanon. Just as Israel’s war in Gaza was not swift and neat after the October 7^th Hamas attacks, they are not likely to act with surgical precision in the connected effort to wipe out Hezbollah in Lebanon. Such efficiency does not serve their true ends as it would leave too many civilians alive to re-form the organization and seek revenge. As Hezbollah receives funding and support from Iran, having U.S. help with that regime serves Netanyahu’s interests for as long as he is at war in Lebanon. Expect him to continue to whisper in Trump’s ear to ask for help (money and weapons) and tell him what a wonderful job he is doing. The fact that Trump has now tied acceptance of the Abraham Accords to any Iranian peace deal is further evidence of Israeli influence. The Abraham Accords were the one meaningful foreign policy achievement of Trump’s first term. Yes, they were almost certainly undertaken with corrupt intent and means, and yes, the Arab nations that recognized Israel were mostly already friendly with Israel under the table but, it was still a step. Forcing others who would not accept those terms when there was less at stake to do so now for a peace deal, only serves to prolong any negotiated outcome. This is not a step taken by someone trying to end a conflict quickly.

Americans more concerned with domestic issues have suggested the war with Iran was started primarily as a distraction. There does seem to be a pattern that any time public pressure and media attention seem to focus on the Epstein files; Trump finds some international issue to distract attention. As long as the American people and domestic political foes continue to demand information and action on this matter, Trump is likely to enjoy having an on again, off again war to help change the subject and inflate his ego. The other significant domestic factor is the fact that it is an election year. Trump is polling at historically low levels and his hold on some factions of the GOP seems to be weakening. His head may be in the sand about some of the reality (because frankly, no one seems to tell him the things he doesn’t want to hear anymore), but his political advisors know that they are likely to lose control of the House. They are fighting desperately, with the help of a politically motivated and biased Supreme Court, to stop the hemorrhaging but the real fear now is that they could plausibly lose the Senate as well. They know that those running against Trumpism are not going to stop asking for release of the Epstein files, and action against the offenders. Losing the House will be bad enough in making Trump a lame duck but losing both chambers would result in an oversight nightmare scenario. This suggests the political side of Trump’s team would prefer a prolongation of the conflict as well because it allows them to play the patriot card. They believe they can rally some of their base to come vote for the Commander-in-Chief during a time of war. This politicization is currently best evidenced by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, speaking in Congress, and identifying Democrats as the biggest adversary facing the nation while answering questions about the war with Iran.

The election factor plays another, even more ominous, role in this larger assessment. Trump’s position on elections is very clear: they are great when he wins but rigged when he does not. He has also made it known that he is willing to use military force to manipulate the electoral environment through the invocation of the Insurrection Act. Other analysts have noted how the use of federal law enforcement agencies in places like Minneapolis seems designed to see what they can get away with. With so many hot button issues at the fore – Epstein files, war with Iran, rampant corruption, gutting the VRA, etc. – during a critical mid-term election, the chances of some contentious confrontations and even large-scale protest seem good. Trump and his strategic team (the stench of Stephen Miller is all over this) would surely use this as further opportunity to test the limits of using federal force to intimidate voters. The goal this year wouldn’t be to cancel the elections with a national emergency, which has been hinted at, but just to further test the waters to prepare for 2028. That’s the election they are truly preparing for. Prolonging the current war with Iran through the election season furthers this objective because it increases the likelihood of the kinds of protests they might use to justify calling up some troops.

If any of this sounds familiar, that would indicate you have read some history or political books because all of this is straight out of the authoritarian handbook. They unravel the checks on power by highlighting the threats from enemies at home and abroad. If no one is attacking them from the outside, they create a threat. Any ‘other’ will do. Iran works well for an aspiring U.S. autocrat now because we have had serious issues with the current regime since it took power. Once the outside threat is established, they can activate and mobilize the martial spirit and play the patriot card in politics. As a parallel, a domestic enemy is also needed to extend the scope of domestic control. Hitler managed to use Jews and Communists as both because circumstances allowed and he was a gifted propagandists. Trump will have to settle for Iranians and Democrats as separate enemies. But the outline is the same. Another critical parallel that many people miss, because what came later was so awful that it overwhelms attention on the earlier part of the period, is that Hitler and the Nazis came to power in a free and fair election. As did Donald Trump. It was only after the authoritarian machinery had been put in place that Hitler used force to control the elections. The Germans called their manufactured emergency Kristallnacht; there is no telling what ours will be called if we allow it to happen. Make no mistake, this is exactly what is happening when the Secretary of Defense says, “The biggest adversary we face at this point are the reckless, feckless, and defeatist words of congressional Democrats and some Republicans”.

It is interesting, and frightening, how it all ties together. Start a war as a distraction; claim victory; justify further action anyway; and use the military to define enemies at home in the name of patriotism. This is where we are now. As the general election season gets going into full swing over the summer, expect more of the same. Peace negotiations will happen when convenient. New attacks will happen when a distraction or tough guy image is needed. Anyone who dissents will be branded a traitor. The politics of the authoritarian playbook is now dictating U.S. policy at home and abroad. Until that political cycle is broken, there is not much hope the war against Iran will see any meaningful resolution.

Well, the short answer is that it says a lot about their choices. If you take the time to read the Bible, you can find a lot of great passages about how live life as an individual regarding how you you behave towards others and as part of a community.

- Deuteronomy 10:17-19* For Jehovah your God is the God of gods and the Lord of lords, the God great, mighty, and awe-inspiring, who treats none with partiality nor accepts a bribe. He executes justice for the fatherless child and the widow and loves the foreign resident, giving him food and clothing. You too must love the foreign resident, for you became foreign residents in the land of Egypt.

- Leviticus 19:33–34 If a foreign resident lives with you in your land, you must not mistreat him. The foreign resident who lives among you should become to you like a native among you; and you must love him as yourself, for you became foreign residents in the land of Egypt.

Take care of widows and orphans and be kind to immigrants. Solid stuff.

- Matthew 25:35 For I became hungry and you gave me something to eat; I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you received me hospitably.

- Deuteronomy 15:11 For someone poor will never cease to be in the midst of the land. That is why I am commanding you, saying, “You should generously open up your hand to your afflicted and poor brother in your land.”

Take care of the poor and the needy. Basic human kindness and charity.

- Matthew 22:17–21 “Tell us, then, what do you think? Is it lawful to pay head tax to Caesar or not?” But Jesus, knowing their wickedness, said: “Why do you put me to the test, hypocrites? Show me the tax coin.” They brought him a denarius. And he said to them: “Whose image and inscription is this?” They said: “Caesar’s.” Then he said to them: “Pay back, therefore, Caesar’s things to Caesar, but God’s things to God.”

Don’t complain about paying your taxes.

And this is just a small sampling of passages that are well known and easy to find. The point is, the person who chooses to live as an individual and community member based on these and similar passages, is the person you want as a neighbor.

So, what’s the problem? If this is the stuff Christian nationalists are reading, why should anyone be concerned. Well, maybe these aren’t the passages those folks are focused on. Perhaps they are drawing inspiration from somewhere else.

- Deuteronomy 20:16–17 “However, in the cities of these peoples that Jehovah your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not allow any breathing thing to remain alive. Instead, you should devote them completely to destruction—the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites—just as Jehovah your God has commanded you.”

- 1 Samuel 15:2–3 “This is what Jehovah of armies says: ‘I will call to account what Amalek did to Israel when he opposed him on the way as he was coming up from Egypt. Now go and strike Amalek, and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill man and woman, child and infant, bull and sheep, camel and donkey.’”

- Deuteronomy 7:3–6 “You must not form marriage alliances with them. You must not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons. For they will turn your son away from following me, and they will serve other gods; and Jehovah’s anger will blaze against you, and he will quickly annihilate you. But this is what you should do to them: you should pull down their altars, smash their sacred pillars, cut down their sacred poles, and burn their sacred statues in the fire. For you are a holy people to Jehovah your God; Jehovah your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to become his people, his special property.”

This is divinely ordained genocide with strong hints of segregation.

- 2 John 9-11 “Everyone who pushes ahead and does not remain in the teaching of the Christ does not have God. The one who does remain in this teaching is the one who has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your homes or say a greeting to him. For the one who says a greeting to him is a sharer in his wicked works.”

- Romans 16:17-18 “Now I urge you, brothers, to keep your eye on those who cause divisions and put obstacles in the way contrary to the teaching that you have learned, and avoid them. For men of that sort are not slaves of our Lord Christ, but of their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattering speech they deceive the hearts of the unsuspecting.”

These read more like justifications to ostracize those who do not believe the same thing as yourself. Much less cool. Again, these are just a small sampling of easy to find passages.

What we can see with these small samplings is that there is plenty to choose from in the Bible. Some of these passages are plainly contradictory. What this means is that no person can choose to live their life basing on the teachings of the Bible without deciding to which parts they will use as their guides. In the end, then, those choices say more about the person than the material. If you are choosing to quote the passages that justify being an asshole to someone who is different than you, that does not mean God has given you permission to be a bigot. It means you are an asshole and you have selectively chosen a text to validate yourself. Detractors of this analysis might suggest that these passages are taken out of context. Of course they are. But that is also part of the point. No one ever quotes the entire Book of Deuteronomy to defend a position of justify a political choice. Every tattoo referencing a Bible passage you’ve ever seen is two to three verses at most. The context matters for the larger lessons these passages teach, but when people talk about the Bible as a guide in their lives, they almost invariably have a few favorite passages that summarize their world view. The passages they favor tell you what kind of person they are. They likely would have been this type of person had they been raised in (or chosen) a different religious tradition. Which passages quoted here would you choose? Would you rather have someone with a Deuteronomy 20:16–17 bumper sticker or a Deuteronomy 10:17-19 bumper sticker living across the street? So, when Trump administration officials use biblical imagery and text as a justification for their policy, think about what they are really telling you. A picture of Jesus with his arm around a man who said he doesn’t ever think about the financial needs of Americans is an insult to the words of Jesus in the Bible. A legislator aiming to ban a specific religious viewpoint in society has made a choice to embrace separation rather than empathy. The Bible is difficult to read for many reasons. It’s doubtful most of these Christian nationalists have ever actually read the whole thing. Frankly, it’s doubtful most everyday Christians, of any flavor, have ever read the whole thing. They all pick and choose. And the parts they pick speak volumes about who they really are.

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*All biblical quotes are from the New World Translation.

Election season is about to ramp up into full swing, and this should be phase one. With the gerrymandering wars still dominating the headlines, every Democratic campaign should be refocusing their strategy. As nearly every state of the Confederacy deep South is on a rampage of racial partisan gerrymandering enabled by the Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act, Congressional Democrats must follow every story with promises to pass new voting protections and anti-gerrymandering legislation. When the Secretary of Defense claims that the War Powers Act does not apply because they changed the name of the war, Congressional Democrats need to promise that if elected, they will pass laws reasserting and strengthening Congress’s Constitutionally delegated powers to declare war and oversee the executive branch. When the Department of Justice indicts the President’s political opponents for posting pictures of seashells while failing to bring charges against anyone in the Epstein files, Democrats must promise to hold exhaustive hearings upon taking control of the House to bring to light the crimes of those involved. As Americans die because they cannot access or afford basic health care, Democrats must promise to pass a law not only strengthening the Affordable Care Act but moving it a step closer towards single payer health care. And so on, this is not an exhaustive list.

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Phase two is the follow-through. Come January, do all these things, and much more. Pass the bills in the House, hold the hearings, call out the criminals, keep the campaign promises. Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has stated that should Democrats retake the House, impeaching Trump would not be a top priority. That’s fine. And regarding the many impeachable offenses of Trump appointees in the first two years of this term, it might not be worth going back to drag all that back up. He should however put them on notice that going forward, they will be held accountable in the House should they violate their oath of office. Democrats in the Senate must follow suit to the extent that they are capable. If still in the minority, force Republicans to take a position on the simple matters of fact at hand. Why do you think this American from your state should not be able to go to the doctor? Why do you think this credible accusation of sex trafficking should not be investigated? If in the majority, get the bills to the floor and pass them. Period. Yes, even if that means eliminating the filibuster. Frankly, they should embrace the valid reason to do so. It is an anachronism that serves no public or institutional interest.

Now to address the obvious observation of the detractors. What’s the point if it is all going to die in the Senate or be vetoed anyway? That, my friends, is exactly the point and that is where phase three comes in which is the most important part of the strategy. What does this have to do with action and accountability? Passing the bills and holding the hearings is the action people need to see. Doing so also sets the stage for accountability. Because if the bill does die in the Senate, someone(s) voted to kill it. Call them out, frequently, publicly, and loudly. “Senator XYZ, in the last year 200+ people in your state have died because they were unable to afford basic health care and get help with treatable illnesses; why did you vote to kill legislation that would have saved their lives?” And so on. There is a significant difference between asking someone a hypothetical about something that doesn’t exist and confronting them about a specific vote on a specific piece of legislation. This is how you hold them accountable. And if it is a Democratic Senator helping to stymie the bill because they cannot embrace the present, well do it to them too. And if the President vetoes a bill that would protect voting rights and ensure free and fair elections, make him explain his reasoning [sic].

Some political operatives will contend that this strategy will alienate voters. That is because they are reading the numbers incorrectly. The primary problem in the recent history of Democratic vision in Congress is that they have felt the need to compromise with their Republican counterparts. One problem with this strategy is the misguided belief that some of their colleagues will negotiate in good faith. At this point, this is clearly a delusional legacy of a time long past and should not factor in any planning or strategizing. Another, related issue, is the belief that Democrats must also appeal to moderates. This is a failure to understand how people truly view their political identities. People call themselves moderates or independents not because their views are somewhere in the middle, but because they don’t really like either major party and don’t want to put the label on themselves. The truth is, almost everyone almost always votes the same way. Swings do not happen when moderates change their minds. Swings happen when weak partisans do or do not show up. Since the policy positions of the Democratic base have shifted noticeably away from what might be considered centrist, appealing to those statistically insignificant voters is not just a wasted effort but potentially counter-productive as it is more likely to alienate weak partisans than it is to gain any new support. Accepting these truths and incorporating them into strategic thinking will be critical to long-term Democratic success. It will increase the turnout of weak Democrats and make them a more reliable part of the base.

Two legislative sessions implementing this strategy would change the political landscape. It would put pressure on the Senate by forcing it to confront the energy of the “people’s house”. It would put significant pressure on specific Senators because they are so much more visible than members of the House. For the Democratic Party, it would allow them to begin shedding the image of feckless cowards more interested in compromise than effecting change. It would allow Democrats to tell the American people that they would actually enact these bills. Instead of “well, I’d support that idea but there’s no point writing the bill because it will never pass”, you have, “I voted for that bill and I’ll vote for it again so elect more Democrats and we’ll get it done”. Observable actions that allow a change from passive to active language that is more engaging with the electorate. Instead of blaming your own lack of action on the inevitable undermining of the opposition, force the opposition to actively undermine what the people want. Then they can be held accountable at the ballot box. Imagine what that would do for the next campaign season.

The American people, at least those who make up the Democratic electorate, are fed up with equivocation and double standards. They are tired of excuses and are demanding action. The current litany of excuses comes from an outdated mindset of how elections are won and how Congress should work. Democrats must embrace the new realities of both. There are no moderates and there are no swing voters. Stop appealing to them. Congress does not work that way anymore. When Republicans have power, they use every bit of it to achieve their goals without compromise or apology. Democrats must do the same. There is no going back, at least not until there is a rational opposition again and much of the damage the irrational opposition has created has been repaired. Until then, Democrats must play to win and when they do win, they must do what it takes to get everything out of the power they wield.

Betrayals. I don’t what else to call some of Hegseth’s actions as Secretary of Defense. The first major set of actions in this category is the mass firing of top military leadership. So far, in just over a year, Hegseth has fired General Randy George (Army Chief of Staff), General Charles Brown Jr. (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), Admiral Lisa Franchetti (Chief of Naval Operations), General James Slife (Air Force Chief of Staff), Lt. General Jeffrey Kruse (Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency), the Judge Advocates of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, and many others including top civilian leaders in the Department. It is difficult to overstate how damaging it is to an organization like the Department of Defense to lose this many experienced leaders in such critical positions over such a short period of time. Sometimes attrition cannot be avoided but, in these cases, none appears to have indicated pending retirement and, to date, no performance-related justifications have been provided. Though there is no direct evidence of the reason behind these firings, the fact that 60% of those fired have been Black or female seems connected to Hegseth’s disavowal of diversity related policies. This assertion is supported by the fact that General George was reportedly fired after refusing to strike four officers from a promotion list. How are they connected? You guessed it, those officers were two Black men and two women. A second set of actions I consider betrayals have been those implementing Hegseths plans to turn the U.S. Military into a Christian Nationalist organization. He has had a “pastor” who believes the U.S. should be a Christian theocracy lead prayers at the Pentagon; he has instituted monthly prayer sessions that significantly blur the line between church and state; and has generally presented a militant form of Christianity as part of his guiding ideology in his role. His overt embrace of these views is in direct contradiction to the intent and spirit of the Constitution he swore to support and defend. Finally, we have a betrayal of fundamental American values in his glorification of violence statements contradictory to internationally accepted rules of war. The most serious of these of course is his statement that the U.S. will “keep pushing, keep advancing, no quarter, no mercy for our enemies”. Another very concerning but less commented on statement is one that came in a similar briefing a week earlier:

America, regardless of what so-called international institutions say, is unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history. B-2s, fighters, drones, missiles, and of course classified effects. All on our terms with maximum authorities [Sic]. No stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars.

This can be backtracked and explained away with some clever language and obfuscation, but as a veteran, I can’t help but feel that this goes against everything service members are taught about the rules of combat. The context of virtually everything he says makes the intent behind this statement even clearer. “So-called international institutions”? The U.S. was once proud to be the backbone of these institutions. “Stupid rules of engagement”? Which rules are stupid, Mr. Secretary? Likely the ones requiring taking care of prisoners and avoiding civilian casualties that he would casually dismiss in subsequent comments. Taken together, these statements and actions of the Secretary of Defense undermine the integrity of the institution and undermine how our military is perceived at home and abroad.

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Damned lies. After the U.S. bombed Iranian nuclear facilities last summer, Secretary Hegseth stated that the strikes had “devastated the Iranian nuclear program”. Testifying before the House Armed Services Committee last week, he stated that “their nuclear facilities have been obliterated (1:05:50)”. These statements directly contradict the Trump administration’s primary justification for the current conflict which is that it was necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. So, which is it, Mr. Secretary? Has the Iranian nuclear program been “obliterated” or is it an ongoing threat? Clearly one of these statements is lie. When called out on this fact during the same hearing, Secretary Hegseth stated that the war was necessary because Iran still maintained nuclear “ambitions”. That is a dangerously low bar to justify engaging in war. What other “ambitions” are we willing to sacrifice American lives to stop? Hegseth has also lied about the nature of the conflict in stating that current fighting – which is happening despite separate lies that the cease fire is still in effect – is “separate and distinct” from Operation Epic Fury. Never mind that this separate effort to reopen traffic through the Strait of Hormuz would not be necessary had we not engaged in the first effort which had a primary justification of something we claim to have already accomplished last year and which our own intelligence reports was not an imminent threat. The day after he tarnished the reputation of his office in the House, Secretary Hegseth further embarrassed himself and the nation by making explicitly political statements when confronted with the realities of the effectiveness and costs of the war: “I’ll say it again today, the biggest adversary we face at this point are the reckless naysayers and defeatist words of congressional Democrats and some Republicans,”.

The Department of Defense, like the Department of Justice, is supposed to be specifically apolitical. To make specifically partisan attacks like this while service members are dying is a disgrace.

Like his boss, Hegseth doesn’t seem to tire of hearing himself spout nonsense so I could go on endlessly with this analysis but I think what I have outlined is sufficient to make my basic point. Rather than serving as a leader for our military, Hegseth is channeling his RT – excuse me, Freudian slip – Fox News experience and larping his way through. It reminds me of the guys who like to reenact Civil War battles as the Confederates because of “heritage” except that at least those guys know they are just playing. Hegseth actually believes he is doing something meaningful when he puts on his costume every day which makes him even more destructive. Some of the internal institutional damage can be moderated by good mid-level leadership. I’m not in a position to assess whether this is happening, but I sure hope it is. Solid NCO’s and junior officers can filter some of the nonsense for their subordinates and remind them of the values they signed up to defend. The damage to the reputation of the U.S. military, both domestically and internationally, will be much more difficult to repair. Mind you, when I say this, I am not referring to what people think about individual service members. True patriots will always be grateful for their service. Instead, I am addressing the image of the institution. The institution that was once the trusted guarantor of freedom of the sees and protector of democratic values around the world is now viewed as a political tool of the Trump GOP to be used to win points with part of their base while distracting from other problems.

All of this comes back together under the recurring theme of leaders being preoccupied with the game of their job rather than doing their job. Donald Trump cannot run for president again but every decision he makes is as though the next vote will be about him. Pete Hegseth isn’t even an elected official but all his statements defending the orders of the Commander in Chief scan as though they were vetted by a campaign manager rather than a strategic military planner. Our service members deserve a top civilian leader who believes in the mission of the Department of Defense more than the political interests of the President. Pete Hegseth is clearly not that person.

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My friend’s comment included mention of Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth so naturally, my first thoughts centered around them and Vance. The Vice President, I suggested, is indeed a terrible person to be considered as the adult in the room because he is essentially hollow of principle. He has no core belief. Trump, though despicable, truly believes in himself and his power to persuade people. He uses it for vanity projects, self-aggrandizement, self-enrichment, and the accumulation of power among other corrupt ends but, he does have a certain charisma that appeals to some people. I don’t get it either, but it would be foolish to deny it. Hegseth, equally despicable, truly believes in his vision of what the military should be. A warped, Christian nationalist, racially pure, all boys club of machismo. He is weakening military leadership by gutting the ranks of those he determines, without any objective justification, have earned their position because of their gender or skin color rather than based on merit. His regular, sometimes mistaken, and always inappropriate, appeals to scripture reflect the sincerity of his view that, despite 250 years of thorough documentation and analysis to the contrary, the U.S. was intended to be a “Christian nation”. He clearly didn’t learn any history or ethics, but his statements and actions are consistently rooted in these core beliefs just as Trump’s are in his own arrogance.

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J.D. Vance, on the other hand, doesn’t appear to believe in anything. Regarding his now boss, Vance once described him as a “morally reprehensible human being” and even speculated that he might be “America’s Hitler”. After Trump won the 2016 election, Vance seemed to have realized this was the future of the GOP and so decided he was wrong and Trump wasn’t all that bad. It’s one thing to say in 2015-16 that you’re okay with Trump’s policy ideas but wish he would behave more presidential. It is another entirely to suggest he is immoral and then decide he’s not. During the same period his criteria for assessing the worth of political leaders changed, Vance also converted to Catholicism. Reading Vance’s own explanation of his conversion, it is difficult to miss his repeated references to the ‘elite’ and ‘hierarchy’. I find it interesting that his acceptance of an authoritarian political leader was so close to his embrace of a church with a hierarchical structure and long history of supporting authoritarian leaders. Vance also suggested that he realized his quest for climbing social and career ladders was misguided. He then went on to use his new love of Trumpism to gain himself a higher position of power. Indeed, at times already appears to be running for President in 2028. Hardly a consistent ideology. Though there isn’t much on record regarding the Vice President’s thoughts about the White House ballroom project, after this weekend’s events I’d wager there will be some strong support coming from him soon. Never mind St. Augustine’s condemnation of the opulence of Rome which Vance quotes and compares to our own society:

Let there be erected houses of the largest and most ornate description: in these let there be provided the most sumptuous banquets, where every one who pleases may, by day or night, play, drink, vomit, dissipate. Let there be everywhere heard the rustling of dancers, the loud, immodest laughter of the theatre; let a succession of the most cruel and the most voluptuous pleasures maintain a perpetual excitement. If such happiness is distasteful to any, let him be branded as a public enemy; and if any attempt to modify or put an end to it let him be silenced, banished, put an end to. Let these be reckoned the true gods, who procure for the people this condition of things, and preserve it when once possessed.
- St. Augustine; City of God

When the Pope, ostensibly Vance’s own spiritual leader, made a comment about world peace, Vance urged him to stay in his lane. For someone who uses his faith as a social and political tool, he does not seem to have a very good grasp on what it means to be a Catholic. I have spent all this time describing what I see as examples of the Vice President’s unanchored beliefs because, according to the piece in the Atlantic noted above, he seems to be the only key leader asking critical questions about the secondary consequences of the war with Iran. So, as my friend originally suggested, when someone this unmoored from any consistent political, social, or ethical philosophy is the adult in the room, perhaps we are indeed fucked.

But wait, it gets worse. As these thoughts were racing through my head, it occurred to me that I had heard little about the National Security Advisor during this conflict. Then I paused, and thought to myself - who is the National Security Advisor? There has been so little mention of the role that I couldn’t recall who held it. It took a few seconds of spinning and then it hit me, Marcio Rubio, Secretary of State, is still serving as acting National Security Advisor. To me, this makes everything described above so much worse. It was bad enough that Rubio was sidelined in favor of the horribly unqualified Steve Witcoff and Jared Kushner for the first attempt at negotiations with Iran in Pakistan. But his being relegated to attending a UFC competition while dual-hatted as Secretary of State and National Security Advisor is embarrassing and degrading. Can anyone imagine Kissinger attending a boxing match instead of going to China? What’s more, Rubio, despite having a similar trajectory from never-Trumper to sycophant as Vance (among many others), is arguably the most qualified for his role(s) in Trump’s cabinet. But instead of the man holding the two titles most directly related to negotiating the end of a conflict being at those negotiations, he was attending the modern-day equivalent of Roman gladiator games, Vance’s hero, St. Augustine, abhorred. Unfortunately for any assessment of Rubio’s principles, this is entirely in keeping with his focus on saying and doing whatever is necessary to achieve the next step in his quest to become President. His lack of self-respect, which he poorly plays off as humility, is part of his consistent focus on maintaining this path.

So, what does this all mean? Well, beyond ‘we’re fucked’, I can’t say I’m entirely sure. I have concerns about the choices of military leaders but those fit better in another place. In this context, it is sufficient to assert, and understand (ish), that once engaged in a conflict, they have a vested interest in seeing it through to victory. Elected and politically appointed officials, however, have a different kind of responsibility. What I have described here seems to indicate that among the most important of those who should be guiding U.S. policy and decision making in the war against Iran, are all uniquely unable to make rational and objective decisions in the best interest of the nation. Each is conflicted in their own way by a special combination of hubris, lack of character, and lack of ordered world view.

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John Kerry, former Secretary of State, has reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has proposed such a joint strike to every U.S. president since he has been in power but has been rejected until now. Why did Trump take the bait when his predecessors all declined? There are several theories floating around as to why President Trump decided to join in the attack. Some suggest it was intended as a distraction from the continuing demand for release of the Epstein files and justice for the victims. Seems plausible. Others believe Trump thought he could help topple the regime quickly and finally get his Nobel. Sounds like his thinking. I have seen it suggested that it is part of the ongoing blackmail by Putin and/or Netanyahu. We know there is dirt out there, if anyone has it, those two would. John Kerry, former Secretary of State, has reported that Netanyahu has proposed such a joint strike to every U.S. president when he has been in power but has been rejected until now. Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if historians ultimately find evidence that each of these factors played a role. Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised to wake up and see a Truth Social post from Trump himself confirming these theories by denying them. All I can say for sure about the why at this point is that vanity and/or personal power had something to do with it.

What I am more confident in speaking about at this point is what happens next. And I’m here to tell you it sure isn’t good. When the Iranian people did not rise en masse in the first week of bombing and confirmation of the death of Ayatollah Khamenei, the war was lost. All we have accomplished is to help Israel assassinate an old man with kidney failure and replace him with his even more fundamentalist son. The tens of thousands of dissidents who were murdered by the regime have died in vain because the regime will now only emerge with even stronger internal control.

Another immediate result is that the U.S. looks foolish. Once it became clear that regime change was not going to happen, that was no longer the reason for the war. Suddenly, it was about ensuring Iran could not acquire nuclear weapons. Never mind that we were told last summer the Iranian nuclear program had been destroyed permanently. It didn’t take long for Iran to leverage one of its most significant geopolitical tools by blocking traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. That gave Trump a new basis for the fighting, to force Iran to open the strait. When they refused, he decided to blockade the strait as well. And that is where we are today: a war with no consistent goal and a double blockaded strait that about 20% of the world’s petroleum liquid must transit to get to market.

As the economic effects of the war began to hit the world, Pakistan attempted to step up and help negotiate a cease fire. The U.S. delegation headed by Vice President J.D. Vance got played by their much better prepared counterparts from Iran and accomplished nothing. The President agreed to a temporary cease fire accepting all of Iran’s demands. Of course, he claimed he did no such thing and of course the firing has not really ceased.

So what are we fighting for and how is this going to end? Well, some days we’re still trying to stop the Iranian nuclear problem and some days it’s about re-opening commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. Because Trump is so erratic and unfocused, it is difficult to predict how long this situation will last. What is likely to happen on these two issues is fairly simple to guess though. Regarding the Iranian nuclear program, there will be some kind of agreement including international monitors that looks a whole lot like JCPOA (the one Trump tossed aside because it was negotiated by Obama) but with terms more favorable to Iran. The U.S. simply doesn’t have the leverage to force something more. International pressure to get oil and gas flowing out of the Persian Gulf will help get the strait back open. This, too, will likely be under circumstances more favorable to Iran because the market will demand their petroleum resources to stabilize supply. Donald Trump will claim a massive victory but the Iranian regime will have emerged in a better position domestically, regionally, and internationally.

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That is only one part of the regional calculus. Israel has used the conflict as an excuse to extend its campaign against Hezbollah by invading Lebanon. Just as Israel did not return the Golan Heights after the Six Day War, it is unlikely to evacuate a devastated southern Lebanon. Surely a security buffer will be required. With Gaza and southern Lebanon in rubble, Israel’s flanks will be secure and it will turn fully towards the real prize of the West Bank. Maybe not immediately, and perhaps not in the same fashion, but this is the next objective. Israel has lost some international good will, especially in Europe, but there is no sign that unconditional support from the U.S. government will wane (never mind the views of the populace). And, much like Iran, Israel’s regional power will be greatly enhanced. A stronger and emboldened Israel and a stronger and angrier Iran, that can only be bad for regional stability.

Even if all of this plays out in the next few weeks, which seems unlikely, and the economic situation returns essentially to the status quo ante, the follow-on effects will reverberate for a good while longer. The U.S. eased sanctions on Russian oil to ease market pressures so Putin will have more cash to continue his fight in Ukraine. China will benefit from greater access to Iranian and Russian oil and gas. As spring turns to summer fuel prices tend to rise anyway so the current shock is unlikely to subside. Oh, and people are going to starve and U.S. farmers are going to go broke. The timing of this war could not have been worse for the U.S. agricultural cycle. While the U.S. is ‘energy independent’ our domestic refining system is not structured to produce the refined products that go into making industrial agricultural fertilizers. Much of the world supply of those products comes from the Persian Gulf. It’s the beginning of planting season in key parts of the U.S. and the fertilizers those farmers need are going to be much more expensive, if they are available at all, because the shipments of raw materials to produce them have been stopped. It’s a 7-8 week trip for tankers from the middle east to the U.S. if normal traffic resumes tomorrow, supplies of fertilizer could be back to normal maybe by the end of June. Perhaps too late to ensure a healthy and productive crop. So, expect a bad harvest. Which means food prices will spike in the summer and fall. To be honest, they will probably start creeping up a bit before then so the actual spike doesn’t hit too hard.

And then there is the damage to the United States diplomatically. It’s almost too much to address effectively in this space. Someone will write a book about it. Aside from being the most significant misuse (read: abuse) of American military power in history – yes, far worse than Vietnam – this venture has damaged relationships with our allies that will take at least a generation to repair. NATO members are discussing forming a separate alliance to defend each other without the United States. The President of the United States is telling NATO that we don’t need them. These are developments that would have been unthinkable even a decade ago. President Trump cause generational damage in his first term and has been working hard to make it worse in the first year of his second term, but this war eclipses all of that in this particular area because of the sheer audacity shown in taking these actions without including our allies and with no identifiable strategic goal. The violation of the letter and the spirit of the commitments we have made which has been the backbone of U.S. security for decades has caused damage that will cause decades to repair. The allies who have depended upon us and answered the call when we asked them to help us when we were attacked, no longer trust us to answer when we are called. We will have to work long and hard to prove that we can be trusted again.

This is what you get when you put people in positions of power who have no understanding of the responsibility that comes with that power. The United States attacked Iran for reasons that are unclear, at best, and with no exit strategy. The results will be a stronger Iran, a stronger Russia, a better positioned China, higher fuel and food costs, greater regional instability, and significantly damaged relationships with our most important allies. Buckle up because if this isn’t the beginning of the end of American greatness, the interregnum is going to be a hell of a struggle.

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The primary problem with Sanders’s wealth tax, no matter how nice it sounds on the surface, is that it is simply unworkable. The first practical hurdle is how to define and assess assets. This is important because the process needs to be able to be fair and consistent. It also impacts how those who would be subject to the tax would pay. The key aspect I have yet to see Sanders or his supporters sufficiently explain is how non-liquid assets such as stocks and property would be assessed. These are critical to consider because they make up a large portion of the wealth held by those Sanders seeks to tax with his plan. The underlying issue with taxing the value of stock holdings is the fluctuation in value. Does the bill set one day a year and tax based on the value of all stocks held on that day? Does it average the value over the current fiscal year? Neither of these is particularly difficult for those with the proper skill set but are they fair? Can either be done in a manner that is fair? This is an important question because so much of Sanders’s rhetoric in pushing his plain lies on the principle of fairness. A second problem with taxing the value of stock assets is that the valuations can be manipulated. If you’re a billionaire whose wealth is primarily based in the stock of companies you own, and you know your taxes are going to be based on third quarter valuations, maybe you do your books so that the third quarter doesn’t look so hot. That not only lowers the value for tax purposes but also might provide a handy window to buy back some public stock while the prices are down.

Real property provides a different kind of problem. Does a federal agency determine how much various mansions and yachts are worth for tax purposes or does the IRS accept the local tax assessments? Let’s assume IRS agents aren’t going to go around the nation annually to assess property values. That means local tax assessors will be doing the job. Betcha none of those folks can be bought off by a billionaire. Call me a cynic. More importantly, property assessments are subjective. Sure, every state and jurisdiction has basic guidelines to prevent radically different valuations for similar properties, but when those guidelines, which are different across state and jurisdictional lines, are used as the basis for federal taxation, that means the billionaire in Florida is paying federal taxes based on different standards than the billionaire in New York or California. No way these guys find loopholes to exploit there!

Another practical problem is that these folks don’t necessarily have that much cash on hand to pay taxes in the amounts proposed. Will they be expected to sell of some stock to pay the tax man? But then, that would also change the value of the stock so how do we account for that? Perhaps they pay using the same method many use to dodge income taxes – take out a loan. Oooh, that’s a good idea because the debt would count against their net worth and lower their taxes. Do we see where I’m going with this? I don’t even know what I’m doing and I’ve come up with a half dozen loopholes and snags in less than ten minutes. Imagine what the billionaires who have loophole finders/creators on retainer can do. Enforcement would be a logistical nightmare.

Last, and certainly not least, Sanders’s proposed wealth tax is constitutionally dubious, at best, though not all analysts agree. To me, the strongest constitutional argument that a wealth tax is unconstitutional is the one that rests on the 5th Amendment “…nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation”. This clause was intended to protect the government’s right to declare eminent domain when necessary for the public good while protecting property owners from having their land simply taken from them. If you think the courts won’t be sensitive to the argument that forcing someone to sell their property (stock) consists of a “taking”, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

What is most important in this part of the argument against Sanders’s plan however is that it is simply not going to pass. At this stage, much like when Sanders and Elizabeth Warren proposed a similar idea in 2019, it is primarily a campaign tool. But, if/when Democrats take control of the House in 2027, they are unlikely to control the Senate (and even less likely to have the votes to break a filibuster) and would face a presidential veto anyway. That puts it off until 2029, at the earliest. I’d wager Sanders is hoping his allies will get it through a Democrat controlled House next year so he can force other Senators to address the bill but I think he is over-optimistic in that regard.

All of this is to say that no matter how much he believes the super wealthy should be made to pay their fair share (a premise with which I concur), this is not the way to do it. Sanders should use his passion to promote policies that are achievable. Bernie Sanders is a powerful speaker and his followers listen to him. He would do better to focus their energies on more practical solutions rather than simply stoking anger at a despised class and making unreasonable, and unachievable, demands.

I try not to simply critique the ideas of others without providing alternative solutions. So what would a better plan look like? How about we try something that has worked in the past? Higher marginal tax rates. This is simpler primarily because we know it is constitutionally valid. As a bonus, the bureaucratic infrastructure already exists to implement it. It is also better because history shows that it works. There was a time when it was not uncommon for CEOs to turn down pay increases and bonuses past a certain level. This would seem preposterous today but as the column linked above explains, there was little reason to accept pay at a level where such a large portion of it would never be seen. It made more sense to pay employees more or invest that money in company growth. George Romney, as head of the American Motors Corporation, was one of the CEOs who did this. Romney left AMC in 1962 to run for Governor of Michigan. In 1965, the ratio of CEO to employee income in the United States was 20:1. In 1964, President Johnson signed legislation cutting the top marginal tax rate to 70 percent and that rate has been lowered several more times since. During the same period, the CEO to employee pay ratio changed dramatically. What was 20 to 1 in 1965 was almost 30 to 1 by 1978. After Reagan’s tax cuts it would jump to 58 to 1 by 1989. After more tax cuts and a tech boom the ratio again jumped to 122 to 1 in 1995 and an unbelievable 383 to 1 in 2000. The ratio would taper off a bit after that but has started to rise again to 281 to 1 in 2025. Another important way to think about the impact of top marginal rates is how they impact the income of lower wage earners. When Romney and his peers were turning down top tier raises, their workers were getting more consistent, and as a percentage, higher raises. As the logic of turning down those CEO pay increases changed, the raises at the lower end of the pay scale disappeared. This chart shows this effect better than I could even attempt to explain it.

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This just seems like a no brainer to me. Detractors at this point might ask: but what about stock options because that’s where much of this wealth is hoarded? And they would be asking a valid question. Stock options are after all how George Romney amassed most of his wealth. In his book Capitalism and Freedom, Milton Friedman identifies how the double tax system of corporate taxes and capital gains taxes encourages corporations to retain their earnings rather than pay dividends:

Let us suppose a corporation earns an income of $1 million over and above corporate taxes. If it pays the whole million dollars to its stockholders as dividends, they must include it as part of their taxable income. Suppose they would, on the average, have to pay 50 per cent of this additional income as income tax. They would then have available only $500,000 to spend on consumption or to save and invest. If instead the corporation pays no cash dividends to its stockholders, it has the whole million dollars to invest internally. Such reinvestment will tend to raise the capital value of its stock. Stockholders who would have saved the funds if distributed can simply hold the stock and postpone all taxes until they sell the stock. They, as well as others who sell at an earlier date to realize income for consumption, will pay tax at capital gains rates, which are lower than rates on regular income.

This tax structure encourages retention of corporate earnings. Even if the return that can be earned internally is appreciably less than the return that the stockholder himself could earn by investing the funds externally, it may pay to invest internally because of the tax saving. This leads to a waste of capital, to its use for less productive rather than more productive purposes. It has been a major reason for the post-World-War-II tendency toward horizontal diversification as firms have sought outlets for their earnings. It is also a great source of strength for established corporations relative to new enterprises. The established corporations can be less productive than new enterprises, yet their stockholders have an incentive to invest in them rather than to have the income paid out so that they can invest it in new enterprises through the capital market.

There is a lot to unpack here and I’m not going to go into all of it. The short version is, Friedman was generally in favor of lowering taxes whenever possible. He also believed that a company’s primary responsibility was to increase profits for its owners (shareholders). Thus, he felt companies should pay dividends before reinvesting. His complaint in this passage is not against capital gains taxes (which he did feel should be lower) but against corporate income taxes which lowered the amount companies had to pay in dividends. In essence, he opposed the same earnings being taxed twice.

What Friedman correctly identified is how the existing structure incentivizes companies to reinvest earnings internally over paying dividends which leads to an increase in stock value instead of income for shareholders. This increase in stock value (unearned income) is how so many of the super-wealthy today have amassed their wealth while paying little to nothing in taxes. Friedman’s solution was to get rid of corporate taxes to eliminate the disincentive for paying dividends. As a good modern Democrat, I cannot in good conscience suggest we eliminate corporate taxes. Instead, to address Friedman’s ethical dilemma of double taxation, I propose a compromise. Require corporations earning a profit to pay dividends (let’s say quarterly) to shareholders but make these payments pre-tax for the corporation and only tax the passive income of the shareholders. Investors would then be incentivized to purchase stocks whose dividends provided income above the marginal tax rates while corporations still pay taxes on the profits above what was paid to shareholders. This would, in turn, incentivize CEOs to focus on producing profits instead of increasing stock values.

The combination of reinstating higher top-tier marginal tax rates and restructuring corporate taxes and dividend payment obligations would go a long way towards leveling out income inequality. This brings me back at last to my critique of Sanders’s wealth tax. He takes this approach because it is politically easier to attack a group of people as an enemy (look at all the ‘others’ Donald Trump rose to power throwing under the bus) than it is to sell complicated solutions. None of what I have suggested would be simple. There would be loopholes and flaws that would need to be identified and patched. But where Sanders is attacking a symptom – the ultra-wealthy – I prefer to address the structural problems that allow such disparities to exist in the first place. Also, unlike Bernie Sanders, I do not believe that the existence of extreme wealth in and of itself is an inherently evil or immoral thing. What is immoral in an advanced democracy is to continue to allow the accumulation of such wealth while the basic needs of so many others are left unmet. Even if the ideas I have laid out here prove insufficient or unworkable in some way (loopholes in any plan will be found - plug them!), I maintain that the issue of economic inequality in the United States should be addressed via means of income inequality rather than those of wealth redistribution. If we can restructure our tax system so that the government can meet the needs of the people – health care, education, infrastructure – and others who are gifted and hard working still happen to become wealthy, isn’t that okay? After all, we’re not communists.

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I’ve always loved the scene in The American President where Michael Douglas’s character comes into the press room and finally says what he’s been feeling but holding back from saying. Throughout the story, his political goals have increasingly been hindered by attacks on his personal life. In typical Democratic fashion he addressed the problem by insisting that the two things are completely unrelated. He makes some strong points to staff members about why this is how it should be. What he finally comes to realize is that how it should be, is rarely how it is and the American people do, in fact care about the personal life of the President (well, certain Presidents anyway). Once he has internalized this and his current strategy has blown up both his personal life and his administration goals, he gives this speech that is peppered with great lines about the American ideal [if you don’t know it, I recommend you watch or read it before continuing… the speech, not the whole movie].

One of the attacks on the President’s girlfriend is that, many years ago, she was at a protest where someone burned an American flag. He addresses this attack with the following:

America isn’t easy. America is advanced citizenship. You’ve gotta want it bad, ‘cause it’s gonna put up a fight. It’s gonna say, “You want free speech? Let’s see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who’s standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours.”

This is great because it point out that real free speech means it has to be for every viewpoint. The setting of the

film takes place early in an election cycle and so he also has to address the political campaigning aspect of the matter:

We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things, and two things only: making you afraid of it, and telling you who’s to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections.

He also addresses the difficulties and problems that arise when the personal and political overlap:

I’ve loved two women in my life. I lost one to cancer. And I lost the other ‘cause I was so busy keeping my job, I forgot to do my job. Well, that ends right now. Tomorrow morning the White House is sending a bill to Congress for its consideration. It’s White House Resolution 455…

….The other piece of legislation is the crime bill. As of today, it no longer exists. I’m throwing it out. I’m throwing it out and writing a law that makes sense.

Finally, he calls out his opponent over all of these matters and issues a direct challenge:

We’ve got serious problems, and we need serious people. And if you want to talk about character, Bob, you’d better come at me with more than a burning flag and a membership card. If you want to talk about character and American values, fine. Just tell me where and when, and I’ll show up. This is a time for serious people, Bob, and your fifteen minutes are up.

The framework is great. Here are a few things that have been happening and here’s some context, and also I call bullshit on the guy who has been spouting this nonsense. The thing that makes this speech truly powerful though is that as you listen to it, you believe that he believes it. And not just the words he is saying but the ideals behind him. He believes in America and American values. This is something that is sorely missing in Today’s Democratic Party.

It’s not that I think Democrats don’t believe in these things. It’s more that I feel they have forgotten how to communicate as though they do. Democrats tend to trust experts and data and I would argue this has led them astray from trusting their gut. They also tend to believe more sincerely in the importance of the separation of church and state and this leads them to avoid language with religious undertones. Both of these trends have been a mistake.

Look at the Democratic candidates who have been successful in building and maintaining a significant following. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez speaks with passion and integrity. She believes in the things she is saying. Bernie Sanders (not a real Democrat but still a very important example) is perhaps the most important example because he has sparked a nationwide movement despite being a Senator from a small state. I am not a huge fan of Bernie Sanders. That’s not fair, I actively dislike him, but that’s not important here. What matters is that every time I hear him speak, I know – I can feel, that he truly believes in what he is saying. This is why he is so powerful in getting people to join his movement. In contrast, when Chuck Schumer speaks, it almost puts me to sleep. The contrast is palpable even to those who don’t really care about the substance. To those of who do, when Schumer talks, it seems as though he cares more about the process of how things are supposed to be done in the Senate he grew up in rather than he does about achieving desired and necessary outcomes. When Democrats had control of government, he would not abolish the filibuster because that tradition, and fear of what might happen later, was more important to him that passing important legislation that could improve people’s lives. When I listen to people like Chuck Schumer, I feel like they believe the Senate is more important to them than America is. This is a recurring impression across enough major Democrats that it tends to dominate perception of the party. While it is right and fair to point out when the opposition is violating ethical and regulatory norms, fear of being accused of the same for abolishing a self-imposed rule is an overreaction that has done more harm than good.

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Another subset of Democrats who have done well are those who are not afraid to embrace their faith as an important part of their campaigns. Rafael Warnock and James Talarico are the two that stand out most right now. (Geography plays a role in this. I was in Georgia when Warnock was elected and am now in Texas.) What each of them was able to do was show how their faith is not just compatible with, but actively guides, their liberal political goals. This has been an important tool to gain the support of Americans who consider themselves to be religious but still prefer liberal policies and value the separation of church and state. I’m not suggesting that all Democrats should start actively campaigning as if their faith is a key part of their political views. If it is not, that would be obvious and would only damage them. The point in bringing up this aspect of political communication is that faith encompasses and incorporates an important range of vocabulary that resonates with people. It’s really the same thing as the examples of Sanders and AOC. Even though their message is not overtly religious, people follow them because they can hear, they can feel, that they believe.

I have in mind two specific sets of voters in bringing up this subject. The disaffected secular left who feel that Democrats care more about their corporate donors than they do Americans, and religious liberals. The former can be won back by truly believing in American ideals. When it comes to passing needed legislation and implementing policy, equity and justice must be more important than a procedural rule in one chamber of Congress. Many of the latter have been in limbo for decades as Democrats have been less willing to be openly faithful and Republicans have become increasingly radical in imposing religious ideas onto political positions. Research shows that even just using language associated with a value system, such as faith, can resonate with people who place strong importance on those values, even when the subject matter is not specifically related.

The message I hope to convey with all of this is that Democrats need to communicate in a way that shows potential voters that they have passion and that the believe in what they are saying. By abandoning language that tends to be associated with religiosity in the name of secularism, Democrats have deprived themselves of a powerful tool that can help them reach an important segment of the electorate. The thing to remember is that faith does not have to be religious. And the language that comes with speaking as though you truly believe in an idea, is not limited to describing or justifying the spiritual or supernatural.

The reason that this lesson is so important is simple: the Democratic brand has become too toxic to too many people. To the rising number of (mostly younger) voters who identify more close with North European style social democracy and are drawn to Sanders and AOC, Democrats are little more than lite beer Republicans. Most seem to have accepted that even these Democrats, or at least most of them, are better than wasting a vote on an independent, but it is still bad politics to alienate such an important voting block in your coalition. To religiously inclined liberals, the apparent lack of faith in anything among many Democratic candidates is equally problematic. Historically these people are more likely to vote consistently which explains why so many Democrats still try to run as moderates. They assume that this is best way to win these votes.

It doesn’t have to be the only solution however. Democrats can take positions that appeal to the Sanders/AOC inspired and use language that resonates with religious liberals and win the votes of both. What matters, what should matter, is getting the things done. If Democrats want to show people that they truly believe in American ideals and the continued success (after we get it off life support) of the American experiment, they have to find a way to appeal consistently to both of these groups of voters. Only then will they have a sustainable path to continuing majorities. Passion and faith are the guides down this path to success. We have serious problems and we need serious solutions. But it won’t be easy because this is advanced citizenship. Democrats need to stop worrying about keeping their jobs and start doing their jobs. We need to challenge not only our opponents, but also ourselves to show that we truly believe in the things we are saying.

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This week, Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna introduced the Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Act. The bill, should it become law, would impose a 5% annual wealth tax on billionaires in the United States. The revenue would be used to reverse the Trump/GOP cuts to the ACA, expand Medicaid, and, among other things, increase public school teacher pay. Sanders and Khanna know that this, on its own, is not enough to garner public support for their bill. That is why one of the “other things” is a $3000 stimulus check to every “man, woman and child in a household making $150,000 or less”. The stimulus checks are not the plan; they are the hook. That will be an important point to remember as I explain why I don’t think the bill will gain much traction. I’m not going to go into the technical and logistical difficulties of actually implementing the plan; I hope more seasoned and experienced economic minds will attend to that task. Instead, what I intend to address is how I feel the proposal fails to understand a key aspect of what American’s think it means to be American.

Let me correct that last statement. What I really mean to discuss here is what American’s think it means to be American. I’m not talking about the racial or Christian nationalist strains that have always been there and are once again very prominent and vocal. I’m talking about something much more fundamental to the idea of what America is supposed to be: a land of opportunity. What I am talking about is the American Dream. Sanders and Khanna would tell you that these billionaires they seek to tax are stifling the reality of the American Dream for millions of others. I can’t say that I disagree. But that’s not the point. The important factor is what average Americans think about it and how it impacts their views on key policy issues. In an attempt to make my point, I’m going to focus on two topics, lotteries and taxes, and how they relate to the idea of the American Dream.

“Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

The New Colossus is great poetry. One of the great embodiments of the American dream. It tells the world (well, mostly Europe) ‘send your overflow here; we’ve got space and opportunity for them!”. Most analysts focus on the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Because when you’re writing about democracy and freedom, that’s the line that resonates. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen the golden door given much analytical attention though even though I think that is the concept that strikes a stronger chord with most people. If the door is golden, what amazing riches must be on the other side? It’s not the political freedom that motivates the American dream, it’s the opportunity for economic freedom and wealth. The tired, poor, huddled masses want economic opportunity more than they care about political freedom. And it is pointless in this context to argue that you cannot really have the former without the latter. The people who cling to this dream typically don’t have the time, background knowledge, or inclination to engage in the debate. They just want to go off and make their fortune. That, after all, was the promise. Not just that anyone can come here and be self-sufficient and not poor, but the idea that anyone can come here and become wealthy.

That idea, finally, brings me to lotteries and taxes. Lotteries are terrible policy. They are by definition, a form of regressive taxation. Most lotteries get public support by being proposed as a way to increase funding for education, infrastructure, and other public programs that have broad public appeal while also promising to keep taxes down. The problem is that the taxes that are ultimately cut or kept artificially low, are property taxes which benefit those who are already doing pretty okay. Evidenced by the fact that they own property. The funds are made up however by those who do not. Which do you see more often buying lottery tickets, they guy filling up his Bentley with premium unleaded using his platinum card or the one who walked in off the bus? And the guy who cannot afford a car probably supported cutting the other guy’s taxes. Why? Because it also came with an opportunity for him to become wealthy, the lottery. Don’t tell him the odds, he doesn’t understand the odds. More importantly, he doesn’t care. He cares about the chance, the hope, the possibility. For that brief moment when he is scratching off his ticket, or waiting for the numbers to be drawn, he has at least a glimmer of hope that this time, it could be him. He gets by day to day, week to week, on that glimmer of hope that this time the dream that comes true will be his.

The failure of the American people to broadly support fair taxation for the wealthy is intimately related. The modern phenomenon was enshrined during the relatively prosperous period of post-WWII domestic economic stability. Between the decimation of European industry by the war, strong unions protecting American industrial workers, and the increased median wages that came along with all of it, more and more Americans were actually able to attain stable middle-class lifestyles. As more and more Americans started to earn more income more consistently what did they do? They supported reductions, at times drastic reductions, in upper tier income tax rates. Now that they had more money, they wanted to give less of it to the government. And even those who were nowhere near the upper tax brackets were happy to allow those rates to be cut as well because, someday, it could be them too. That is why American’s do not consistently support taxing the wealthy. They hold on to the dream that they will someday be wealthy themselves and they do not want to tax their own dreams.

This is why I do not believe Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna will get very far with the public in garnering support for their bill. They will certainly gain some supporters because there is a growing anger at the super-rich and the promise of a stimulus check will appeal to the short sighted. I still don’t think it will be enough because the kind of support they would need, technical and possible Constitutional issues aside, does not show up in polling. A decently representative poll on this bill would likely show majority support. But Congress does not vote based on polls. Because polls do not vote. The support this proposal would need to pass would require to pass would be a massive and sustained campaign of voting constituents contacting their Senators and Representatives telling them that failing to support it would cost them votes. And I do not believe Americans are nearly as likely to write those letters to insist on raising taxes they hope might one day apply to themselves. In fact, I think it is far more likely they will buy a lottery ticket.

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A while back my buddy and I were chatting about the awful state of things in the nation. In the past, we’ve had many discussions about how bad this or that thing is for American foreign, domestic, or economic policy. But this conversation was much more just about the American spirit. We fairly readily reached a conclusion that left both of us in despair and without much more to say. I’ve been wanting to address that idea here but I couldn’t really decide how to approach it. It’s a simple thought, really. But I don’t like it. And you likely won’t either. At least, I hope you won’t. Because it applies to you and I as well. If it weren’t true to a deeper degree than we have heretofore been willing to recognize, I wouldn’t be writing this. Now that you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m going to tell you about what I saw more recently that helped me realize how to approach this subject.

When I saw the photo of President Trump and Maria Machado when she gifted him her Nobel medal, I immediately experienced so many negative feelings that I couldn’t perceive which was strongest. Embarrassment, revulsion, disgust, anger, sadness. There’s no hope of understanding this post if you don’t attempt to perceive what the image reflects about the American spirit. My first impression when I saw the picture was that Trump looks like a 3 year old who got an extra toy in his Happy Meal. It’s a new thing he possesses and so he thinks it makes him special. And just like the extra toy has no intrinsic value because it was an accident, Trump’s possession of the medal is meaningless because he did not earn it. What I think about Machado’s decision to do this is an entirely different topic that doesn’t really fit the theme of this blog. Trump’s acceptance, and childlike giddiness at doing so however, is right down my alley.

To me, this photograph represents the epitome of everything that is wrong with American culture, to the religiously inclined, the American soul. Every nation, every culture has its weak spots. Truly great and enduring cultures are able to recognize those weak spots and work to correct them. Unfortunately for us Americans, ours has been a dominant social and political issue since the founding of our nation. This makes it difficult for us to recognize the profound impact it has had on all of us. Even those of us who find it abhorrent.

Slavery. Racially based slavery. That’s it. It was a poison that was a part of the nation’s culture, economy, and politics since before it was even a sovereign nation. In the first century of our creation and nationhood, there were many important attempts to address the matter. But they all failed. It’s not uncommon for people to point to the failure to punish the Confederacy as the root of our modern problems. There is a strong argument in this position because it is arguable that doing so would have cured the rot. Nonetheless, I find the argument lacking because it ignores nearly a century of independence that not only failed to address, but actively passed on to future generations, the task of dealing with the core issue. By the time the Civil War ended and the Confederacy was defeated, the Union’s victory didn’t do anything to address the cause of the disease. Slavery was ended, sure, but the ideas about humanity that allowed that form of slavery to exist were deeply embedded in the nation’s culture and ideologies. Even Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, thought it best that newly freed slaves be returned to Africa.

What allowing slavery, and specifically slavery in the form that it took in the United States,

to exist for so long did was embed in the American public spirit the concept that a certain group of people could be classified as ‘others’ simply because of a trait beyond their control or choosing that set them apart from those in power or in the majority. Attached to this was the implicit understanding that these ‘others’ could be used to do the work the majority did not wish to do themselves, or as scapegoats when leaders did not want to be accountable for the problems they had created. Despite the grand language of our founding documents to the contrary, the fact that this reality existed for as long as it did has made the concept impossible to eradicate.

Attempts to eradicate slavery ran up against many walls over the years. Many tried at the Constitutional Convention. But, instead of ending slavery, the Constitution implicitly recognizes it as a valid socio-economic structure and gave slave holders extra political weight in the national government. This, despite the fact that many of the most prominent national leaders at the time wished to end the institution. What matters in the long run is not that James Madison knew slavery was a poison that could destroy the nation, but that he, the main author of the Constitution, ultimately found issues of national defense and economic security more important than the humanity of an entire group of people. And he was hardly alone in that view.

It’s common to defend this choice of the founding generation by pointing out that they could not have foreseen the things that would come even before their lifetime was over. I’ve made this argument myself at times. And it’s true, the clause allowing Congress to abolish the slave trade in the future might have had the desired effect but not for Eli Whitney and his cotton gin. We will never know and it is pointless to argue about what might have been. What is undeniable however is that this clause allowed the drafters and ratifiers of the Constitution to clear their own consciences while setting aside the problem for a future generation.

The next major dodge was the Missouri Compromise (1820). As it had been in drafting a new form of government, unity and avoiding internal conflict in order to preserve economic strength and security was more important than the humanitarian ideals of the Declaration of Independence or Constitution. So slavery was preserved once more. As the nation continued to expand westward, another similar compromise was required in 1850. Balance and political conciliation were once again more important than recognizing the humanity of African slaves. Just a decade later the issue came to a head and the nation finally had its Civil War. There was no more room for compromise.

The Civil War was always about slavery. Anyone who says differently is lying to you, or at least to themselves. The great irony that helps prove my larger point is that even during the war, many people refused to openly acknowledge this most basic of facts. No, the war is about state’s rights, or the failure of the federal government to enforce the law. These platitudes were never anything more than vain attempts at self-delusion. When the war was won by the Union, and slavery was abolished, that should have been the end of it. At least that is what the ‘punish the Confederacy’ crowd would like to believe. They argue that had the Confederacy been properly punished, it would have eradicated the cancer and the racist element in the U.S. would have died away.

I believe this is an argument based in wishful thinking. It is an attempt to blame current problems on generations of the past in order to believe that we can fix the future by acting differently now. Unfortunately, it is just a mirror of what generations before did in passing on the problem to the future. No generation will ever fix anything without addressing its own problems and failures in its own time and context. Passing solutions to the future, or blaming them on the past, will only result in deflection of responsibility and accountability.

Slavery is, I believe, the original sin of the American republic. And not just of the system of government, but of the soul of American culture. And the latter is far more important. The structure of the system of government is a beautiful thing. In fact, much of my writing and analysis is an attempt to describe how we can use its tools to make us better. What I am realizing now is that the structure can only work properly if those who have to use it are in tune with its spirit. Today, I must sadly conclude that the American people are not. We are rotten.

I have already outlined some of the key events surrounding the long road to the Civil War that reflect this rotten spiritual core. But there are many, many more examples. Just a decade after the war ended, there was yet another grand compromise that prioritized unity and reconciliation over the humanity of freed slaves. A generation later there was the Chinese exclusion act. After that businesses could simply hang a sign saying ‘No Irish need Apply’ to reflect and enforce their cultural bias. And let us not ever forget the centuries of pushing aside the Indigenous Peoples who had lived on the land for millennia.

Something that all of these historical phenomena have in common is the true tumor in the American spirit but it’s not racism. I wrote that racially based slavery is the nation’s original sin but that doesn’t mean it is the core problem. It’s simply the first and most enduring symptom fertilized by the true rot. That true rot is a sense of entitlement. Americans are whiney, spoiled brats. We see something we perceive will make us stronger or more affluent and we use this as a justification to take it from those who already possess it. We are also lazy hypocrites. Americans brag about their work ethic and then expect others to do the hard work - whether they be slaves imported from Africa or low paid laborers from Mexico. Then, when things get tough, we blame the very workers who have made the previous standard of living possible because we are also uneducated pricks with an ingrained habit of blaming ‘others’.

It is so pervasive that it is difficult to find a point in our nation’s history where there is not a key example. The bad guys change, and sometimes get recycled, but it is never ‘us’. It’s the blacks ungrateful for their freedom, the Catholics more loyal to the pope than country, the potheads who are unpatriotic because they opposed the war in [COUNTRY], the elite who don’t pay taxes, the poor who live off the system without working, the politicians who use office to enrich themselves, connected who don’t have to pay for their crimes… and so on. There is always some minority to blame our problems on. The disaffected and those who advocate for them can always find some group to blame their problems on. But rarely, if ever, do the mass of American citizens look in the mirror and blame themselves for being a part of the problem.

To that point, I now cast myself as part of the problem. The recent murder of Renee Good in Minneapolis has sparked another wave of protests across the country. Among the related calls to action I have seen several organizers suggest that what the nation truly needs to get the administration’s attention and bring it to heel is a general strike. Not just the UAW or AFL/CIO affiliated unions, but everybody. It’s a good argument in that it would likely have a significant impact because all the leaders care about is social and economic stability. They’d throw some bread or a $0.50 increase in the minimum wage at the strikers to calm things down and the strikers would be able to claim victory. Everyone wins. Except no one wins. The problem with the idea is that it simply won’t happen. Americans will not participate in a general strike on the scale necessary to make it work. Part of the reason is fear. People will be afraid they would lose their jobs. And they are probably correct. Be honest with yourself, are you going to risk what so many Iranians are risking right now? I certainly can’t afford to just stop going to work. But a sense of entitlement is also a big reason people won’t strike. They’ll see organizers trying to get it together and talking optimistically about how much it’s going to force change, and then when the time comes, they’ll just continue to work because they’ll expect others to do it for them. Because American’s are entitled cowards. Someone else will do the hard work. Someone else will fight the fight for me.

We had it too easy for too long. We were protected by superior weapons and technology (and built up resistance to diseases), oceans, and mostly empty space. We never had to overcome our internal differences because there was always some ‘other’ to blame. Even when we did fight ourselves, we pretended it wasn’t about what it was really about. And today, when it sometimes looks like we might be on the brink of fighting ourselves again, the rhetoric from all camps is about making it about someone else’s problems. No one is looking inward at their own failures. There are enough boogeymen out there for everyone to have enough to deflect from their own actions or inactions. Well this isn’t my fault because I didn’t vote for them. Well it’s not my fault because I didn’t vote at all.

And that’s how we get a President who smiles like petulant toddler when mommy gives him a treat just to shut him up or get him to put his clothes away. He’s just eating up his shiny new thing he didn’t earn. It’s pathetic. Just like our mythology that we conquered the continent through hard work and perseverance. Bullshit. We raped and slaughtered countless Indians and built an economy on the backs of slaves. But we defended Europe against tyranny in both World Wars! Sure, because we were never directly threatened by the fighting. We sent our boys to protect our economic prosperity. All the while continuing to repress our own ‘others’ on the home front. It wasn’t until a century after the 14^th Amendment that we passed some laws to give it teeth. Less than a century after that and we are systematically gutting those. We talk about the American Dream and the City Upon a Hill as if they were ever real things. Wake up. They were always lies we told ourselves to pretend we weren’t part of the problem. And I’m not exempting myself. I write this blog to make myself feel better. It helps me vent my frustrations and anger so that I don’t take it out on my liver (Ha!). I’m not going to join the general strike anymore than the rest of you are. I might give up an afternoon, on a weekend, to join a protest. But I’m not going to skip work for days (maybe weeks) at a time to make the government hurt. I can’t afford to risk it. Because I too, am an entitled wimp and I’m not willing to put my job on the line for the greater good. And this is why I say Americans suck. We are shitty people because we’ll talk a big game but most of us aren’t ever willing to back it up with the kind of action needed to back it up.

Donald Trump and his cronies are following the wannabe despot’s playbook almost verbatim. It’s exactly what the Nazi’s did, exactly what Mussolini did, exactly what Stalin did, Pinochet, Saddam Hussein, Maduro, among countless others. It’s exactly what Orwell warned us would happen. Because the Nazi’s and WWII have such a unique place in the American mind, it is not without irony that Hitler’s is the model Trump is most closely following. And just like Hitler, Trump was legally voted into power. Just like Hitler, he is ignoring laws that do not suit him, flouting international laws and norms, and stoking/fabricating emergencies to justify expanding his powers. But Trump’s is not the despotism we should really fear. The despotism we should truly fear is belief in own ability fight through the current emergency until things aren’t that bad anymore. Because that’s what we’ve always done. It is what we have become accustomed to doing. The reason we must fear this is because when things aren’t that bad anymore, we brush aside the real issues so we can get on with life. And we’ll blame someone else, some new or recycled ‘other’, for all that has transpired. But remember, as I have already noted about being elected in free and fair elections, Trump did one more thing Hitler had done as well, he told us all exactly who he was before coming to power. (If you haven’t read Mein Kampf, you really should). And that is why I say the American people are rotten. We’ve spent our entire existence extolling the virtues of democracy and freedom while ignoring the repression within our own borders. We’ve built our modern identity upon defeating some of the worst tyrants humanity has ever known. And then, when our own would be despot tells us exactly who he is, what he wants to do, and how he wants to do it, tens of millions of us vote for him in three separate elections fully aware of, or willfully blind to, exactly who he his. And those of us who know better, and did not vote for him, and do not support him, yell on podcasts or write blogs to soothe our own consciences hoping the tough times will pass and we can get on with our lives. Because that is our custom.