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America is at a crossroads. Last night’s “presidential” debate told us a lot about where we are in this country. And frankly, it isn’t a good place.
Four years ago on the eve of the presidential election I wrote a piece called “What the Election Will Tell Us About Ourselves.” I explored the road the Republican party had gone down in recent decades to divorce itself completely from The Party of Lincoln. And no, today’s Republican party is NOT the party of Lincoln. Two days after the election I wrote a follow up – What the Election Says About Ourselves.
I won’t go into a blow-by-blow recap of the “debate” since a million media outlets have already done that. If you watched the debate…no, I should phrase that as “if you survived the debate”…you know that it was a nightmare. This is the kind of behavior Americans have always thought of as happening in third rate dictatorships. That’s what we’ve become.
The main takeaways are that 1) Trump was psychotic (there is really no other honest way to put this), 2) Trump not only refused to condemn neo-Nazis and white supremacists, he gave them a rallying call (which Nazis literally celebrated during and after the debate), 3) Trump lied (every. single. breath.), 4) Trump attacked the U.S. military, the election process, the people who have died from COVID, the people who are trying to protect us from him and COVID, Biden’s family, your family, the moderator Chris Wallace, and virtually everyone and everything else. The only people Trump didn’t attack were 1) Vladimir Putin (who apparently owns hundreds of millions of dollars of Trump’s debt), and 2) the aforementioned neo-Nazis.
Yes, the leader of the Republican party has confirmed beyond any doubt that he is racist and Anti-American.
So where do we, us, all of us, the American citizenry, go from here?
My father fought in World War II against the Nazis. He was an anti-fascist. For almost everyone in my age range, our fathers, and sometimes our mothers, fought against everything that Trump is for. My father, my uncles, your fathers, your uncles, were not “losers” or “suckers,” as Trump has called them.
There is a reason that half the military, who by inclination and obligation generally support the commander-in-chief, do not support Trump. There is a reason that hundreds (probably thousands) of military and intelligence leaders have come out to support Biden and warn us about Trump. There is a reason that many respected leaders of the Republican party, including John McCain’s wife, support Biden and not Trump.
We have a choice. We blew it four years ago and we’re now literally on the brink of losing our democracy.
The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise — with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.
We have a choice. We must make the right choice. The only way to save America is to vote. Vote early if you can. Vote in person if you can. Vote by mail if you must. Early voting has already started. Vote for Biden/Harris for the survival of the nation.
David J. Kent is a scientist, a traveler, and an Abraham Lincoln historian. He is the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity (2013) and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (2016) and two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.
Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!
Hot White Snow 
All I can say is that he was abysmal 45 years ago and has become spasmodically worse.
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I lived and worked for a decade in the NYC area and Trump was considered a con man and moron back then. It’s an embarrassment to the nation that he is where he is and wasn’t been tossed out long ago.
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I remember. I have a bit of history in NY and Alabama, amongst other places.
I’d like to read more about George Wallace. Seems to me that many have compared Trump to Wallace. From what I can tell, Wallace was way more hard working and accomplished.
The other populist that folks bring up is Huey Long. All the Kings Men. I know very little of that story beyond the RPW novel.
Paranoia seems to be a common feature in folks that scrap their ways to leadership roles. Trump’s version is more psychotic and hateful, and less informed by reality than any other I can think of.
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Wallace was a racist at a time when a push for civil rights was threatening white male power. In that way, Trump reflects exactly the same. After Obama became President, the racist white supremacists saw their power disappearing, so they did what they always do – they came out full racist to knock back the rights of virtually all Americans.
This frantic blowback and use of intimidation, violence, and voter suppression happens every time non-whites get a glimmer of enjoying their Constitutional rights. Racists started the Civil War because the election of Lincoln threatened slavery. They created the KKK, Jim Crow laws, lynching, and segregation when Reconstruction threatened to guarantee non-whites their rights. They created more ways to suppress the vote and dehumanize/criminalize blackness after the civil and voting rights acts of the 1960s. And now we have blatantly racist Trump giving neo-Nazis a rallying cry during a “presidential” debate on live TV because whites were afraid a black president (and a woman president) would signal the end of white, male, fake-Christian racist power.
We can vote for Biden to save democracy, or we can lose the last best hope of earth.
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Makes all government seem corrupt. Leaves all power with wealth instead of law.
But it is a balancing act. But there is hope. The twerp is undergoing an implosion not unlike Jerry Jr. Psychotic instead of alcoholic though.
A few major media players could change things quickly. That’s perhaps always been the case, but disturbing.
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Making all government seem corrupt and not working is an intentional strategy of today’s Republican party. They block legislation, destroy regulatory infrastructure, lie about it, and then use the inevitable mess as an excuse to destroy more. It’s part of their platform.
I have no faith in the media. First off, the network and cable media are all for-profit organizations, which means in order to exist they must achieve profit margins. To do that they sensationalize everything. Secondly, those standard media are now overwhelmed by millions of blog sites, many of which can’t be distinguished from parody or Goebbels-ian propaganda sites (e.g., “Fox News,” which repeatedly argues in court that it is an entertainment organization, not news). All of this stimulation means overwhelming the public to the point where we narrow down what we read/watch/imbibe to those sites that reinforce our views, thus avoiding the discomfort of having to think.
Bottom line: the media aren’t going to save us, as Chris Wallace’s inability to manage blatantly psychopathy last night proved (and Wallace is one of the rare journalists on Fox, and considered one of the best media people on cable news; which says a lot about the state of the media).
Anyway, it comes down to us voting. Around 40% of eligible voters didn’t vote last time. If they all vote, they have the power to change things, and quickly. Lincoln said: “it is not the qualified voters, but the qualified voters who choose to vote, that constitute the political power of the state.”
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This is the first POTUS election which gave me pause to fear, truly fear the worst. I have been following POTUS elections since Eisenhower. I am nearly oversaturated with what may or may not happen and yet, I fear because of the SCOTUS issues combined with the election–I cannot sleep well.
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Agreed. This is a crisis moment that is overwhelming and unbearable. And yet we must bear it. We must vote to save our democracy. We must get rid of Trump/Putin and elect Biden/Harris.
After we’ve saved the Union we can argue policy options. But first we must vote. All of us.
I’ve struggled to keep the faith in us citizens. But we must have faith that right makes might (to quote Lincoln). Somehow, like COVID, we have to find a way to get through this so we can have a better tomorrow.
Take care of yourself. Find a way to get the sleep you need. Be well. This too will pass.
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David, that is the level of optimism I struggle to maintain.
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Oh, and I do too. But we must. And yet, it’s akin to “trust, yet verify.” We must have a level of optimism, and yet act…and act repeatedly and boldly. There is precedent for great leaders like Lincoln and Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King and John Lewis, but each of these had a populace willing to help them achieve their goals. We have a window, a moment perhaps. We must sustain it.
I know you will, and I hope I can influence some within my narrow sphere to do so as well.
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I hate to say this, but I’ve simply stopped listening. I didn’t even bother with the debate, and tuned out of the analysis about 30-seconds in. These things are usually minimally informing at best in a “good” year. And from everything I’m hearing, it was just a crap-fest. Maybe this will serve to end these silly-season media events.
I once took a Public Relations Writing class in college as an elective. I recall a presentation from some retired corporate PR guy (from an oil company, no less) where he commented on where to focus a message. He pointed out that at the anchored extremes are people not worth the effort as they’re already committed, whether one way or another. Good PR in terms of productivity is thus aimed around the middle of the bell-curve.
Since Trump can really only appeal to one of those anchored ends, his only strategy is to simply screw up the message to everyone else. And he’s an expert at this. He’s a practiced media personality, who like a rock star, benefits merely from drawing the attention. And frankly, what does he have to lose by coming publicly unraveled when the backdrop of his legendary business-genius persona has suddenly gone up in the smoke of multi-billion dollar tax losses and monumental overseas loans?
If Biden made a mistake, it was to even engage. Like dealing with a teenager having a hormonal tantrum, there isn’t any point. There isn’t really anything to discuss. The best it can serve is to bring Biden down to the same level and muddle any kind of rational message. It’s simply a way to lose contact with that middle, which is exactly what Trump wanted.
Personally, if I’m going to have watch something (I can read faster), I’d prefer a format like a ballot-initiative approach to answering questions…Each person records a position, and each person records a rebuttal. They don’t even need to be in the same room. Enough of this nonsense. I’m dropping my ballot off tomorrow afternoon.
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Agree with everything you wrote. Which must be a first. 🙂
Thanks for voting. It’s the only way to stop what is happening. And then the real work begins.
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I can’t stand much modern video. Seems too easily produced and just too pointlessly consumed and not edited as well as it could be.
But I do wonder about the skills of reading and incorporating complex info that may slightly degrade as we rely upon video. Written language has become compact. Look at SMS. Not sure how that’s progressing.
For What it’s Worth: 1967 Stephen Stills tune reemerging.
The late 60’s cultural situation in Europe and the US maybe has something to tell us.
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Each generation has its complaints about the previous generation, and the next. In some ways we’re very different; in others, basically the same needy creatures. Reading comprehension and retention would seem to be significantly reduced given the emphasis on sound bite-sized stimuli, but then speed of reaction, detail recognition, and decision-making are probably enhanced (though whether in a good or bad way is in). For me, the key problem is the lack of depth of understanding tied in with the lack of historical context.
I haven’t thought much about how today compares with the 1960s. I guess I’m stuck in the 1860s. And 1930s Germany. And I suppose the 50s/60s/70s civil rights and environmental awaking eras. And maybe all the bits in the middle. In any case, I doubt most of America has the historical context to understand what is going on now.
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I suppose many of the differences could be attributed to linguistic style. Or perhaps communication style. That shifts with technology. Then there are adjustments as the new stuff is not quite as hoped.
Or one can go farther back and see what chaos the printing press bestowed. Gizmos upset authority. And then authority panics.And then the gizmos are just gizmos.
But communication speed continues to rise. Yes there is a lot more trash. Way more. The editing job is yet to be even tackled.
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I’m with you on the video. My general complaint about passive media news in the US is that it’s pretty much all of the “infotainment”, irritainment”, or strategically abbreviated variety. I suspect it’s primarily a function of economic appeal combined with managerial editing. But the net effect is heavily-edited mass consumption mush that conveniently omits anything that might challenge digestion (effectively propaganda). From FOX to NPR, domestically, I don’t know of any, non-editorialized, passive-media news-services left anymore. Even most American text media now seems to fall into one of these groups, just at a slightly higher Flesch-Kincaid grade-level. Maybe Reuters? But the days of MacNeil/Lehrer are long gone.
Maybe I’m just naive to the stupidity of previous generations, or maybe it’s just more apparent as the complexity of the world has increased. But this this doesn’t bode well to me…
kottke[DOT]org/14/10/the-reading-level-of-presidential-speeches (replace the [DOT])
So yes, I maintain some Aynishness in that I don’t think everyone is necessarily qualified to choose their leadership (*I submit our last election as evidence*). I don’t even think everyone is qualified to lead (*again… same evidence*). But I don’t see the mindless promotion of a Cultural Revolution led by a new generation of Dunning-Kruger afflicted editorialists as a viable alternative. There’s something happening here. Just… What it is ain’t exactly clear.
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I don’t think that the simplification of language is necessarily a bad thing (referencing your Kottke link). Early American (and British) language was rank with puffery and pretense, not to mention excessive commas (something I’m too often guilty of myself, apparently along with parenthetical remarks). Writers are constantly told to “omit unnecessary words” [something I also have trouble with 🙂 ]
That said, I do agree our language cognition has degenerated in toto even if you consider that a greater percentage of the masses are literate compared to early America. More concerning for me is the lack of critical thinking skills. Sound-biting has killed our attention spans and the depth of evaluation to which you allude has disappeared.
Your last paragraph is interesting in that the Founders didn’t think too highly of the qualifications of the masses to choose our leadership. The last election, and many others, do indeed provide evidence that they were right and the contention is still right. And yet, we do all have the right and obligation to vote, so we have to figure out how to improve decision-making of those masses. Unfortunately for the country, that may prove an impossible task.
P.S. Thanks for the Buffalo Springfield. A nice, and apt, touch. 🙂
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You can credit estebang for the “BS” reference. (ツ)b
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But don’t think that I let the “Tax the rich, feed the poor” lyric go past.
The whole idea of elitism is confounding in the present .
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My problem is what happens after the, “Till there are no rich no more,” part. The merely parasitic tend to die along with their hosts.
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There seems little probability of the rich disappearing, notwithstanding the rhetoric of a 50-year-old song.
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Reassuring. 😉
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Control theory and sociology.
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Thanks for speaking out so forcefully, David!
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You’re welcome. We all need to do so.
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My ballot arrived today. Ballot actions on constitutional amendments were troubling as usual The language of those things is a nightmare. One has to research them.
Alvin Lee was maybe just writing out of convenience. But maybe he was just trying to sow chaos. Stephen Stills was probably more of a competent observer.
I spoke with an aunt in a nursing home in north Georgia. She is pro Trump. She is 95 and remembers tribal hardships. Still, that is the sort of stuff that made me happier to just leave. A coward move.
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It does seem they don’t put enough thought and research into wording of amendments, which seems like a no-brainer to do.
My mother has a friend who is an adamant Trumper, and just as adamantly believes every ridiculous falsehood he says even when it contracts the previous falsehood. The friend will never change and my mother has decided not to press the issue because at her age, and with my father a year+ gone, she needs whatever friends she has. As long as they don’t talk politics, they are fine. And as long as my mother doesn’t vote for Trump, I’m fine. Sometimes the most difficult conversations are choosing whether or not to have them.
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I’ve had my ballot for awhile, and intended to drop it off several days back. But I’ve run into the same issue. Even some local initiatives are so questionably worded that it’s difficult to decipher the actual motive. Growing up in the Homeless People’s Democratic Republic California, however, my ingrained reflex is to vote “NO” on anything I don’t understand completely. As good as it might sound in the argument, you could pretty much bet that something like the “Innocent Child Dwelling Defenestration Protection Act” was sponsored by something like the safety-glass lobby.
And I live in libertarian, church-going-or-not, legal cannabis, gambling and prostitution, open-carry (or mandatory-issue CCW), flag-waving-pickup-truck or Tesla country… so I get along with everyone. (*I really don’t want to have to shoot any of my friends in self-defense.*)
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In most cases, avoidance of friend-shooting seems logical.
I do wonder who writes some of these initiatives given their ambiguity on the ballot. Mostly here they are bond issues to pay for school and road repair/expansion. No window lobby here, apparently.
Must be fun to live in a state that is its own contradiction. Ah, but then I suppose Virginia is really two different countries. Northern Virginia is America and the rest of the state still thinks they are the Confederacy.
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I just always assumed that ballot initiatives were purposely misleading.
Maybe there is a hope to get slightly more to vote against all change.
Being averse to air travel, I’ve driven from the Gulf to Maine a few times over the last ten years. Sometimes it takes me a while to really appreciate regional differences.
I’m a bit doubtful that my signature will pass the ballot scrutiny test. Can one get one’s history of signatures in some sort of FOIA request? But I’m early, so there’s time to protest.
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We have six state, three county, and six local initiatives… much muddled in terms that would never be allowed in a research paper (“encourage”, “claiming”, “sweeping”, “fiscal irresponsibility”… in just one!). A three-page “explanation” reads like something from a Trump/Biden debate. I can see that some of these initiatives are promoted by institutions with a hand in the till, and I almost never vote for bonds. Large school districts with entitled nepotism and crony networks are among the worst. It pays (taxpayers, anyway) to read the actual legal text of those very carefully. But there’s always the rare instance of something intended to legitimately close a legal loophole, tax malfunction, or the way something is administered.
I just perceive America’s preoccupation with finding some individual upon which to heap its social frustration as symptomatic rather than causal. On one hand, I live in close proximity to California’s long-term result of state-endorsed irresponsibility as the country’s social (and literal) public toilet. But I’m also interested in a rational approach to governance. Consequently, I’ve been watching the unfolding drama with a certain emotional detachment (if also with a finger near the ejector-seat switch).
Curiously, there’s an almost uniform support for Trump among the regional Filipino community, within which I have some close ties. Seems ironic that much of this is among naturalized citizens immigrated from one of those countries Trump compared to California… and I’ve asked about that. Just listening, some is religiously motivated. But there’s also an undercurrent that I think is powered by the community’s strong work-ethic, and a general antipathy toward things like drugs and crime. I think the Democratic Party ignores this kind of thinking at its own peril. Despite the NPR narrative, not everything is motivated by race.
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RE: “But there’s also an undercurrent that I think is powered by the community’s strong work-ethic, and a general antipathy toward things like drugs and crime.”
Just proves that Republican propaganda works.
“I think the Democratic Party ignores this kind of thinking at its own peril.”
True. And yet they don’t ignore it.
“Despite the NPR narrative, not everything is motivated by race.”
Race is more of a placeholder for all the societal inequities, much of which are, of course, originally race based.
I’ve seen other immigrants, primarily Asian, who think like your Filipino friends. Many Chinese and Indian who come here on H-1B visas so generally come in at higher income and social standing. But the truth is that virtually all immigrants work hard, and probably harder than a large percentage of native born (aka, white) Americans.
Again, prove that Republican propaganda works.
N.B. By “Republican” I would include Civil War-through-Civil Rights era “Democratic” propaganda, which is basically the same thing…not to mention 1) false, and 2) race based.
This doesn’t mean I favor all current Democratic policies either; some of which are intellectually obnoxious, and, worse, ineffectual. I would prefer that the people we elect as our representatives work to accurately identify the problems and debate all reasonable possible solutions. But then I’m just a naive idealist in that regard, it seems, since this would require Americans to stop letting themselves be so easily manipulated by those who live to manipulate others. And that clearly isn’t going to happen unless some interstellar alien race evaporates us all and replaces us with some species from another galaxy. Perhaps marmots.
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Thanks for the smile. I like marmots. And I guess I’m one of those “Asians”. A Filipino-American friend is the president of the regional Asian-American Republicans. She laughs at the name of the group, pointing out that “Asia” refers to everything from Israel to Japan and Malaysia to Siberia, and every major world-religion including even state Atheism.
Perhaps it’s just that we have the in-your-face example of California right next door. It’s been run essentially by Democrats (with some brief excursions of vented frustration), since the mid 90’s. And having grown up just south of the Bay Area and attending college in Orange County, it’s actually horrifying to see what’s happened there. My last visit to San Francisco inspired “Entropy” (July 2018). Since then, whole areas in California have descended into scenes mirroring some post-apocalyptic nightmare. And hundreds-of-thousands of public drug-addicts and untreated psychiatric cases aren’t somehow being caused by “Republicans”.
The flood of California refugees is now locally very obvious. I’d say a majority of license plates down the hill to the southeast (Carson City / Carson Valley area) are now “California”. If California seriously pursues its “wealth tax” scheme, I suspect property values right here in town will very suddenly skyrocket as that state’s wealthy hop over the border to build or obtain a “primary residence” here. Even an old tract house in the Bay Area will presently buy a big new home on a nice piece of land down the hill. My old friend in southern California is already considering whether he should bail out before the rush. I get it… but it’s just dumb. (If you don’t know about this, you should check it out.)
I probably shouldn’t do this, but I intend on watching tonight’s VP debate since there’s a fair chance we’ll see one of these yahoos in the Oval Office before the next four years is over-and-done. Ugh… Probably need to take a shower afterward.
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As a New Englander transplanted to the foreign nation of Washington, DC, I admit to being largely ignorant of the workings on the left coast. So I’ll take your word for what conditions are like there, though I’m not sure how that jibes with California being the 5th largest world economy.
I’m planning on watching the VP debate tonight too, something that calls into question my sanity given how I barely survived watching the first debate. Yes, the shower may be needed.
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Well, I watched the debate, listening very carefully over some excellent homemade clam chowder, and scored each set of responses with copious notes that mostly read things like, “deflection”, “stall”, “BS”, “rhetoric”, “no answer”, “vague”, “emotional appeal”, “factual omission”, “opinion”, “no evidence”… in order to be as objective as possible. Between the trash-talk and nonsense, I did, however, score 78.5 points between the candidates. No comment as to how I distributed them, though it seemed like most of the pundits had been listening to something else. But I’ll say that my opinion of each has changed little… very little. At least my dinner stayed down, though Still, I think a big glass of wine might be good before bed.
California’s wealth is based in its Pacific Rim gate-keeper economy. In the same way US wealth is based in skimming from banking transactions all over the world, California takes a cut from everything that either passes through the state, or that takes advantage of its hub status. However, there’s been a steady hemorrhaging of business out of the state as taxes and regulation are costing more than the convenience conveys. My friend with the shipping issue in my last post essentially runs a business in Nevada that ships internationally through the Nevada bureaucracy as a proxy for some California-based niche agricultural producers. It’s actually less profitable for these California business owners to directly export their products than it is to simply wholesale into another state and let someone else profit from the export. I understant that the business that had its shipment held in Japan is actually in the process of moving its operations to Montana.
msn[DOT]com/en-us/money/personalfinance/california-wealth-tax-could-become-first-of-its-kind-in-us-under-new-proposal/ar-BB17VLlt
(replace the [DOT])
Much in the news about California’s last gasps at taxes… getting slammed by even the most liberal media outlets, even the LA Times! (Unfortunately, you’ll need a subscription.) MSN was about as far left as I could find… I didn’t think you’d appreciate the Forbes analysis. Essentially, any individual worth more than $15-million will be compelled to quickly leave the state. If they don’t, they are automatically liable for a 0.4% tax on their *net worth* (in addition to a 54% total tax on incomes over $5-million), and for ten-years even after they leave the state.
Consider that in California, the top 5% of state wealth pay two-thirds of the state’s income-taxes, and that nearly 40% of California residents pay no state taxes at all, and you can see where this is going. The “middle-class” is evaporating away in a state where the wealthy support a massively dysfunctional welfare system.
Sorry about the long comment. I don’t mean to hijack your post, but I thought I’d relay the left-coast version of America, at least from my mountain-top perspective. Time for that glass of wine.
(ツ)v
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You seem to have taken the debate more seriously than I did, even before the fly incident (not to mention the person coughing/sneezing in the audience). I saw about what I expected to see from both candidates, including a lot of things that were so false as to be from an alternative universe.
Thanks for the primer on the California economy. For the record, I read Forbes for business/tax info, not MSN (and I rely on NOAA/NASA, not Forbes, for climate change and other science issues). While I do see a lot of left and right wing views on issues, mostly they are immaterial to the actual proposals because they skew their “analysis” to fit their predisposed position. Still, I don’t spend a lot of time analyzing California, no more so than any other foreign country. That said, I am cognizant that California is not Iowa is not Louisiana is not New England (and Vermont is not Massachusetts, etc.). I do think that the candidates, or more accurately, the Congress when it does the actual passing of laws and budgets, need to spend more time parsing the regional aspects of reality, not just some overarching national strategy. But a national strategy is necessary, as COVID has clearly demonstrated.
Back to the debate for a second. I did find it amazing that Pence/Trump were taking credit for all the work that state governors had done despite Pence/Trump trying to thwart that work every step of the way. I have to give Pence credit for being the smoothest pathological liar on the planet.
Not that it matters. The fly has already upstaged the coverage of the event, as has Trump’s decision to skip the second presidential debate once the organizers decided it had to be virtual because of Trump’s widespread COVID outbreak. Of course, he could have flipped on this decision while I was typing this.
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