Search Results for: Antifa And Me

29 September

Antifa And Me: “Dear Jon, I Can No Longer Support Your Work” But What Is Support?

by Jon Katz
Supporting My Work

Last week, I wrote a rather anguished account of my grappling with my increasing identification with Antifa, the anti-fascist street movement popping up across America. I said I would wear an Antifa bracelet until Nazi’s stopped marching in torchlight parades through our city streets.

I am not complaining about it, but I did understand this was a controversial idea and that many people would be upset with me, although I was somewhat surprised that so many were not. I love my bracelet, I wear it every day and am taken aback that so many people in my conservative upstate N.Y.  town thank me for wearing it and ask me about.

In America, it is increasingly the custom to celebrate freedom and patriotism while often denying freedom and tarnishing the very idea of American patriotism. It sometimes feels like a slogan without meaning.

Here, loudmouths and iconoclasts like me can speak freely, explore our beliefs, change them and learn and grow, or stand or ground. I write what I think, and as I go. I am not a fixed point, but a raging stream.

I love that about America, there are few places on our earth where one can do it.

Ideas swirl about my head like a whirlpool,  I believe consistency is the process of small and fixed minds, the country of the left and the right. If the bad guys ever do takeover, it is understood that I will be one of the first to be dragged out into the night and shot or locked away, it always thus.

It would not be because I am important, but because nobody would want me to get important.

I change my mind about things, hourly, that’s what it means to think. But I have not changed my mind about my bracelet from Antifa.

This morning, I got a letter from Berkeley, Calif. from Tim S. Inside the letter was a lovely card which began: “Dear Jon, if your “heart is with Intifa,” I can no longer support your work. I do not believe in using violent means and destruction of property against opposing ideologies and groups. Further, I found your characterization of Antifa to be overly simplistic, naive, and lacking of nuance. If you were thinking of answering…Don’t Bother.”

t was an interesting message, it felt more like an e-mail to me than a letter. The letters I get every day are usually quite thoughtful and loving and wonderful to read. The letter was significant to me, because it raised important questions about what support of someone like me really means, and whether the idea of support means accepting ideas you don’t like as well as ideas you do.

I understand how Tim feels, and living in Berkeley, he sees a lot more Intifa than I have.  This loosely knit coalition has done a lot of things I would not do and cannot condone.

I did, of course, reply. He doesn’t get to tell me whether I can do that or not, and I thanked him for the card and said he did, of course, have to follow his heart as I am following mine. People get the right to decide who they want to read, that is not my decision.

The letter got me thinking about what support means in the realm of ideas.

He seems to be against assaults on opposing ideologies or groups, but he is not in favor of my opposing ideology or beliefs. It occurred to me reading this letter that he obviously has never supported my work or he would know that sooner or later, having written 23,000 plus blog posts, I would express a belief he does not like. To me, that is sort of the point of reading something.

I don’t agree with the President’s belief that protests around the flag or the National Anthem denigrate the people who have given their lives for freedom. That is precisely what so many men and women have given their lives to protect. They were not dying for good manners, they were fighting and dying for freedom.

And freedom is not always polite or conventional.

If Tim were speaking to me, I would ask him why only read things you agree or like? If it is wrong to assault opposing ideologies of thought or political belief, why it is okay to ban me and call me names, an assaultive kind of message, as opposed to civil and thoughtful disagreement? You don’t change minds by calling people names.

But the difference between Tim and I is that I like dialogues, I never claim to always be right. And he doesn’t want to speak with me, which tells me how knows or cares little about me. By running away he rejects the very idea of dialogue.

This is the thing in America, we have to hate what and who we disagree with, and this what Tim is doing while convincing himself he is doing just the opposite. Is it possible that everyone is protecting freedom all at once, in their own ways?

I’m not going to run from it. I am a dialogue guy.

My heart is, in some ways with the Antifa because they have drawn the line against hateful ideologies that promote the slaughter and genocide of people with whom they disagree. People like me. If Nazi’s and white supremacists take hold, as they are beginning to do, they have made it clear that they will not observe conventional rituals and values about free expression. They will kill people like me and people who are a different color than they are.

And I should say I do differentiate between outspoken conservatives and Nazi’s. They are not nearly the same thing. But when Nazi’s and white supremacists march with torches through city streets, and are not challenged by our most powerful leaders, lines and distinctions get blurry quickly.

Unlike most politicians, Nazi’s keep their promises.

I always thought my government would protect me from people like that, but now, I’m not so sure. And Antifa is trying to protect people like me from people like them. If they become legitimate and secure, then history tells us there may be no stopping them. My family has, over the years, learned that lesson only too well, and I can’t run or hide from that reality.

People who have been enslaved know it as well. This, I think, is the great disconnect. You are either close to it or you are not.

I could be wrong about this, it is not a simple issue for me at all, despite what Tim thinks. I would have enjoyed hearing his thoughts about it, name-calling and banning and storming off in a huff is not the way in which I communicate, it is the national disease, it is not an  expression of freedom, but an assault on freedom.

I do not argue my beliefs on Facebook, or even in letters with classy notecards.

I think the national conversation underway about patriotism, the flag, and free expression is a great and hopeful thing, and it is long over due. Freedom is worthy of debate, it is a fragile thing, given human history.  I don’t have the answers to it, all but I am listening, and I am especially interested in listening to people who think differently from me.

If Tim feels this way about me, and if he can’t express himself in a more thoughtful way, he is wise to move along, life is short. But I would define support differently than he does, and remind him he could never have possibly supported my work if he could write a letter like that. In this way, he makes himself irrelevant to me when he very well might have something to say that I need to hear.

Irene, from, South Dakota, has and does support my work. And she doesn’t like what I wrote either.

She sent me a letter this week also and in it, she said: “Jon, I have enjoyed your writing, books and blogs for years. I often disagree with you, but often find reasons to think in your writing. I was sorry to see you are identifying with Antifa, it seems to me you stand for very different things than they do. You are not a violent or angry and  destructive person.

You are entitled to your opinion, I’m not writing to attack you, call your names, or quit reading you. I’m see you explain yourself over time – I am not agreeing with you on this  – and I am interested to see whether you change your mind or not. I thought your piece was powerful and it did make me think, and for that, I will always be indebted to you. Keep on trucking, you do good work. Best, Irene.”

She added a very thought page or two on just why she disagreed with me and gave me much to think about.

I don’t know Irene, but I love her. She is a patriot, she understands what it really means to be an American. She understands what it  really means to be free. And she really does support my work, for which I thank her.

At the close of his letter, Tim wrote “goodbye.” Goodbye to you also, sir, and I hope you find what you need.

 

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25 September

Antifa And Me: Chewing Myself Up. Fighting Division Or Creating It?

by Jon Katz

I really would make a poor street warrior, on any side of any struggle.

I am old, have sore knees, heart disease and angina. I converted to Quakerism as a teenager, and I like to believe I have committed myself to a life of compassion, empathy and peace.

(Warning: If you are one of those many Americans who are outraged by disagreement or different opinions, or who simply cannot bear ideas that are different from yours, you might as well storm off in a huff now, and save some digital space for others. Sooner or later, you would leave me anyway. This is yet another chance to do it before your stomach gets upset, or your blood pressure rises.)

No one was more surprised than me when I ordered my $20 Antifa (pronounced ANtifa) bracelet last week and promised myself I would wear it until Nazi’s (I don’t believe in the idea of the Neo-Nazi, you are one or you are not) were no longer marching in our streets with lit torches promising to get rid of Jews and African-Americans.

There is confusion and hysteria about the antifa’s, as with everything else in our country these days.

The President refers to them as “bad dudes,” and compares them to Nazis. He suggests they are as much to blame for violence and hatred as Nazi’s or white supremacists. There is considerable evidence to suggest that there is some truth that.

But to me, that does not make them the same as Nazi’s.

I am so sorry to say that I am grateful they exist.

I wrote about the antifas and me a couple of days ago.

I got the bracelet for the reasons stated but also because I found myself being appreciating the antifas, as they are known.

I believe they are fighting in the streets to protect the lives of people like me, and many others, many of whom know that the Nazi’s mean it when they say they will kill off people who are not like them. I have the ghosts of so many members of my family in my head, I admit it.  Those who survived all said they wished they had done something. The antifas are doing something.

I wrote that I would wear the bracelet until Nazi’s were not marching down our city streets with torches.

On the surface, I don’t have much in common with the antifas.

They are most often described as an extreme or militant movement of autonomous, self-styled, anti-fascist groups who tend to be  anti-big government and anti-corporate.

They are also described as being on the “extreme” left, which is not very far left in America, including anarchists, communists and socialists. The media loves to label provocative or different political groups as extreme so that they can marginalize them. You will never see them on those awful panels.

I don’t really see myself in that description, yet in a way, I do. I think some of it is just in my blood, and I do not think of the antifas people as evil, even if they are not like me and do not do what I might do.

The idea of antifa is that the Nazi’s and their followers need to be stopped before they can’t be stopped. They don’t tweet about white supremacists or hold press conferences to denounce them, they believe in taking direct action.

They want to stop them before we get used to them marching in the streets with torches, and give them an entrenched foothold in our culture and communities while patting ourselves on the back for our progressiveness and commitment to free speech. Their tactics may be wrong to many, but their motives do not seem evil to me.

History tells us it is easier to keep these people out than get rid of them. And their history – what they do after they march with torches –  is awash in blood and horror. If you are awake, its hard to be indifferent or optimistic about them. They are not just another political group out for a parade. They keep their promises.

The antifas are not new, they go back a long way in Western culture. Fascism is not new either, it  seems to pop up from time to time, especially when demagogues arise to exploded the aggrieved..

I’m not writing about this to upset people,  really, or to argue with strangers on social media. I don’t feel I have to defend my beliefs on Facebook or Twitter. I just have to be honest about them.

It’s a fascinating experience in America in 2017 when you cross a line, I do it from time to time in my writing, most often unconsciously. I crossed a line when I euthanized a dog who bit three people, including a child. I crossed a line when I put a blind pony down rather than build a new pasture for him. I crossed a line when I supported the New York Carriage Horses, and the elephant trainers in the circus.

People stormed off, people signed on. People are outraged, people are curious, people are approving, people just want to see the dogs and photos.

I certainly crossed a line when I wrote about my bracelet, which is sitting snugly on my right wrist now, and where it will live for a while, I hope not too long. It reminds me of the blurry boundaries between people who fight injustice, and people who fight injustice only in ways we approve of. I knew what I was in for, I can’t complain about it this time.

Since I wrote my post about the bracelet, I’ve gotten some lovely messages of support, some death threats, promises to rape or murder my loved ones,  badly written Jew-hating screeds, many promises to wreak havoc with my life in ways I would be reluctant to share, open as I try to be.

What a happy day when I can take the bracelet off.

I am no hero, for sure, but if speaking my mind and my truth becomes a capital offense, there are a lot worse ways to go. I’d be proud to go that way, better than drooling to death in a nursing home. I feel close to my readers, and I don’t fear that, really. They can handle it. They have endured worse.

We live in a despairingly polarized country, and there should be no surprise that the antifa would rise up and grow quickly. For many Americans, our President is not just another Republican, According to a recent Suffolk poll, seventy-six per cent of all Democrats consider him a racist, 71 per cent agree that his campaign contains “fascist undertones.”

And so many people seem to love that about him.

That is a staggering statistic. What do we expect?

If you believe that is true, how far would you be willing to go to stop it? How far would I go? Can a pacifist believer in non-violence identify with a group of idealistic kids who will be violent, if necessary, to stop evil? Back to Hannah Arendt’s moral philosophy guide: you only have to respect yourself, you don’t need the approval of others.

I’m afraid I don’t have the answers.  As our leader is fond of saying, we will just have to see.

In 2013,  a group of young activists in Portland, Oregon objected to a group of Nazi’s who planned to march in their annual Rose Festival parade. The group declared that “Nazis will not march through Portland unopposed.”

The parade was cancelled. The Nazi’s did not march. Antifa was reborn here.

I became a reporter during the 70’s because I wanted to be an observer, not a warrior. I still don’t want to be a warrior. Is the war coming to me, busting open the sylvan peace of the farm?

I have never practiced any kind of violence in my life against people, but I don’t hate or condemn all of the people who sometimes do. Gandhi, a passionate advocate of non-violence, said if he had been fighting anyone but the British, he would have embraced violence right away. If he were fighting the Nazis, he said, hunger strikes and non-violence would have been useless.

They are fighting for me, these people, I feel it. I do appreciate it. The people who are paid to protect us don’t seem to be much interested in doing it, they are instead chasing after African-Americans athletes who are speaking their conscience, the most American thing there is.

It is not a fantasy to imagine what  the people they are fighting against would do if they ever become powerful and accepted –  to me, my wife, my daughter and granddaughter –  there are many guides and precedents. What is my responsibility to them? These menacing and  groups are growing  rapidly, gaining political power.

Who else is stepping up to fight them? How many of our leaders are condemning them?

The danger sometimes feels closer to me than others. I do not believe every threat online is real, despite the pledges I read regularly. I’ve been doing this a long time, my hide is thick and hard.

if it were, we would all be dead, especially me. But I should not have people threatening to kill me because I wrote buying a bracelet that startled even me, and am trying to figure it out.

A number of people responded to my column about the bracelet by simply saying, “that’s it, I’m out of here.” I don’t know many of them, I suspect the bulk of them were never there at all, just fish swimming around on Facebook looking for something to be outraged about.

Some of course, are sincere, and just going where they want to go, doing what they believe is right. Bless them.

In America we use labels – communist, socialists, conservatives, liberals, right, left, urban,  rural – to dismiss ideas that make us nervous or that we don’t understand. We just swat them away like no-see-um bugs in the Spring, we keep them off of cable news and out of our debates and politics, we push them to the margins.

How great are we doing with just the “left” and the “right?.”  Do we have all the answers?

Mostly, and happily, I stick to dogs and sheep and farmers and rural life, our politicians have not yet figured out a way to polarize donkeys and Boston Terriers. I suspect they will.

That bracelet column was not an easy column to write, and my bracelet is not an easy one for me to wear. I don’t want to be a Jewish author, just an author.  I don’t wish to be promoting violence and division. But sometimes, the world can catch up to you.

If people can’t bear to consider what I am  writing, or handle a different opinion,  they best be off, because this is not the right place for them.

I am always buoyed by readers and open, thoughtful people. Many people wrote me to say they couldn’t agree with me, that they couldn’t go across that line, but that they appreciated my writing openly and honestly about it. I share my life, not just the life others would like me to live.

So there it is, I’ve dipped my toe into the maelstrom, the boiling pot,  that is public life in America these days. I’m joining the football players who are all over the news.

This morning, I was happy to be back taking photos of Gus on Fanny, and today, Red and I will go to the Mansion and see how the gang is doing.

I believe in crossing lines, that means my mind is open and I am willing to think and grow. When I stop crossing lines, it will be because my heart finally wore out. Not yet.

Tomorrow, I will be taking another picture of Gus and Red and Fate at work.

But today,  I’m keeping my bracelet on.

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4 August

The Tragedy Of Andrew Cuomo And The Two Americas, A Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde Horror Story: RIP, Governor, August 4, 2021

by Jon Katz

“With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to the truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two.” – Dr. Jekyll, Chapter 10.

It’s a horror story, closer to Robert Louis Stevenson than American politics.

As a student of irony, I am caught in the grip of this one: a powerful leader soars to prominence and fame when he stands up for honesty, compassion, and responsibility in a time of great crisis.

His nation (there are two) is grateful and is eager to reward him with more power.

Ahead, it is easier and easier to imagine him as the leader.

All he has to do is nothing, or rather, the same thing.

He stands in vivid contrast to the other powerful leader, his enemy,  who lies and hides from his responsibilities for personal gain. This leader is cast out of power, but cannot accept defeat and becomes traitorous and angry.

His other nation adores him and will do anything, even commit violence and sedition, to return him to power.

Each of them comes to stand for a different way of looking at morality and truth, and the two become symbols for the Two Americas that have emerged to split their one nation in half. Couldn’t the strong and the powerful Andrew Cuomo be the one to lead us back?

He seems to have everything – charm, brains, savvy, courage.

Both of these seemingly different men are geniuses when it comes to using power, and both are known to treat the women in their lives and workplaces harshly. Nobody seemed to mind much, and the women were frightened to talk.

But in one nation, women are rising up. That was the governor’s nation.

Imagine that just one year later,  one of the leaders lives in palaces in exile, determined to seize power again by any means possible, and the other, the anointed one,  is alone and disgraced, his life and future ambitions in flames.

It seems he is a predator, after all, preying on the women over whom he wields absolute power, degrading them, abusing them, harassing them.

It is hard to even count all of the people he hurt, all the victims strewn in his wake.

Everyone knew he was difficult, no one knew he was pathological – it seems both of them are – his loyal aides shielded the governor from the world. His workplace is a nightmare.

The Attorney General’s report blew the lid off of his lies and predations. Suddenly, the emperor’s clothes were gone, he stands naked before his people.

The two nations – each one moving farther and farther apart from the other – are thrown into turmoil and grievance. One accepts their mad leader and believes everything he says, the other, it seems, draws a line and says no more.

Cuomo, like Trump, wants it all. They both always want to be the victim and the sufferer.  They take responsibility for nothing.

New York is a nation all of its own. Nobody, but nobody, is buying it. If Cuomo were Donald Trump, which he is trying to be at the moment, it would be different…a witch hunt, fake news, dirty politics. Imagine his rally in Central Park, if his story was believed.

It’s true, New Yorkers are too smart for pungent bullshit.

(“I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief of sufferers also…” Dr. Jekyll.)

If Cuomo were believed, the conspiracy theorists would be hard at work, cranking out alternate realities – jews, Antifa, Black Lives Matter, those radical socialists, Dr. Fauci.

It seems that Cuomo is still studying his adversary.

But this time he is mimicking him, his big mistake.

We really are two nations, and the two nations really are quite different. The governor took the wrong lessons from the former President.

Had Cuomo stood up in front of those cameras, admitted his wrongdoing, promised never to do it again, and got help for the people he harmed and for himself, I’d be writing a different kind of story.

Trump is a poor role model for Andrew Cuomo, and New York is not Mississippi or Georgia. At those press conferences, Cuomo could fake being humble and empathetic. Under fire, he is just Mr. Hyde, he’s left Dr. Jekyll behind.

So they each, it turns out, were never so different from one another as we thought, a morality play worthy of the Greeks, even if Shakespeare wouldn’t touch it.

In each nation, shock, anger, and sadness.

The people in each wonder if there is a hero out there somewhere on the horizon that they can believe? Or if that was always just more fake news?

A doctor friend tells me some wisdom I needed to hear, as I am struggling to make sense of this: the problem, he insists,  is that powerful men have always had powerful, out-of-control sexual drives, sex, and power have always been tied to one another.

If you look back through history, he has a point. Warriors conquer, to the victor go the spoils.

The problem, he says, is that society doesn’t yet care to see this as a health issue and a potential danger in our time that needs to be acknowledged and addressed.

This is the first thing I’ve heard all week that helps to explain what powerful men do to themselves and to others.

“How many times?” he asked me in wonder, “does this have to happen before we finally get it. Women get it, they have been paying the price all throughout human history.”

I can’t help but think of Charlie Rose, who destroyed a career and a reputation for the chance to show his penis to some women who came by to work.

What are we missing?

It was just about a year ago that I wrote several columns that focused on the contrast between the brilliant and wildly popular daily press briefings that Andrew Cuomo, was holding on the Corona Virus, complete with graphics and homespun stories about Mom.

This was a blessed relief for people all over the country from the tortured, dishonest and incoherent rantings of then-President Trump on the same subject.

I remember those poor sick people who drank all that Chlorox, they ought never to be forgotten.

My columns were the most popular pieces I had ever written, got the most shares on the Internet, and drew hundreds, if not thousands, of people to my humble blog.

Andrew Cuomo was the man, our Covid superhero, our Captain America of responsibility.

It was all right there for him to take. All he had to do was keep his hands to himself and his mouth shut.

That was way too much to ask a powerful man at his peak.

To me, this was the story of two Americas, a seasoned and seemingly moral political leader rising above himself and the times, to tell the truth, calm a frightened city and nation and become a hero and a leader overnight, at least to his half of the two nations.

Surely this would be the end of his evil doppelganger spewing lies and more venom in exile.

Donald Trump, the leader of the other half of the country, was the perfect Mr. Hyde to Cuomo’s Dr. Jekll, one leader embodying honesty and responsibility, the other wantonly embracing lies and cruelty over honor.

And getting away with it.

I didn’t realize at the time that one person could embody both and that Andrew Cuomo was the Jekyll and Hyde for the Two Americas that we now live in.

In one man, our best and worst. What a mess that turned out to be.

I will be forever grateful to Andrew Cuomo, who was my governor during the worst of the pandemic, for telling me the truth during those scary days and helping me protect myself, my family, and the people around me.

Cuomo had a Sgt. Friday way of just giving me the facts, and telling me what I needed to do, something that kept me calm and well informed. I had the sense he was watching his opposite closely and simply doing the opposite of everything he was doing.

He acknowledged the crisis, wept for the victims, gave firm guidance, told the hard truth. He was our Winston Churchill, calling us to arms, warning of the sacrifices.

Watching him, you just knew it would turn out all right. Watching his nemesis, you just knew it wouldn’t.

By then, I had given up on President Trump, who could barely open his mouth without lying. I can try to understand liars, but I doubt I will ever be able to abide by them.

Cuomo seemed to fight for every life in New York City, Trump was sacrificing thousands of people to benefit himself politically. It was the perfect opportunity for America’s Governor to cement his place in history.

Yesterday, instead of being grateful to my governor for the great job he did, I was reading every word of the devastating report by the New York State Attorney General. It was shattering and credible.

Even in the midst of his soaring popularity, or perhaps because of it, Cuomo was demeaning, abusing, groping, humiliating, harassing, and threatening women and co-workers, including close aides and a State Trooper assigned to his security detail.

I’m not sure I can recall any time when a hero was shattered so quickly and thoroughly. The Attorney General’s report is a classic: direct, unsparing utterly convincing. This isn’t a grumpy man. This is an awful man.

Devastating is the right word for this report. It is not refutable.

I believe every single word of the Attorney General’s report and pray that every one of these women is believed, respected, honored, and rewarded for their courage in telling the truth in a world that seems more shameless every day.

The last thing we needed is another Trump. I may never vote for a man again. In fact, I promise.

The best I can say for my Governor is that he is a very sick man, but whatever he is, he is finished in politics. The rest is not my business.

He, like the man he tormented during the pandemic, is not fit for office. President Biden gracefully and bluntly sealed his fate. Every powerful politician in the Democrat Party is abandoning him and calling for his blood.

Like Donald Trump, he is overflowing with grievance. Nothing is his fault, he takes responsibility for nothing other than being heroic.

Otherwise, everything is everyone else’s fault. Perhaps we can summon Sir Gawain to bring honor back.

I knew when I wrote about Andrew Cuomo last year that nobody close to him – nobody – liked him. He didn’t care and it didn’t seem to matter. It matters now. He doesn’t have a friend in the world, except for his brother Chris, and he may be gone soon as well.

He is so isolated I am feeling sorry for him. Almost.

He will soon be gone.

Some people seem unable to help themselves. Doesn’t that make them sick?

I am glad that New York State is not Arizona, and lies are still looked upon up here. They wouldn’t go for Jewish lasers here.  Cuomo made a pathetic attempt to lie his way out it. There are no cable conspiracy theories, no Fox News, to lie for him.

No important politician in either party in any part of the state is defending the governor for what he did. But if silence could kill, he’d be in the ground.

In his public statements, the greatest irony for me to see is that Cuomo is really only different from Donald  Trump in form, not function. He is cruel, dishonest, arrogant beyond words, and a predator without shame or remorse. I can’t imagine why they would be feuding.

But this is New York, not Washington or Texas, or  Florida. He won’t get away with it, he won’t sleaze his way out of it, his lies won’t work. If I can’t be grateful for my governor every longer, at least I can take some comfort in where I live.

We are tough and nasty people, we are allergic to posturing, we see too much of it.

Monday was for all purposes, the end of Andrew Cuomo’s career. A sad story, I can’t help it. How sad for all of those women, I wish them healing and safety.

In the shameless age, Cuomo is now alone and fighting desperately for his survival. It won’t work. He’s in political Hell now, there is no way back. One can only wish he leaves the stage with a modicum of dignity and self-respect.

I have none for him at the moment.

He was really Mr. Hyde all the time, as vicious, selfish, and dishonest as a politician can be.  Those press conferences were mostly shown.

Trump gets away with it, Cuomo won’t and perhaps that is the silver lining in this story, there is still such a thing as honor and accountability in our country.

What never has happened to Trump is precisely what is happening to Cuomo – he is being held accountable. And if he and Trump turn out to be brothers in abuse, at least their two nations have different ideas about morality.

Governor, since you made so much noise about taking responsibility last year, perhaps it’s time you started taking some, rather than blaming everybody else, including your victims. That actually could be a path to salvation for you.

That is the tragedy and promise of the Two Americas in which we are all living.

One still clings to the idea of truth, honor, and accountability, and the other has embraced a new ideology, one that threatens our democracy: win at all costs by any means.

Never let go and never yield. We are becoming a shameless country, no wrong is bad enough to be punished.

Andrew Cuomo betrayed me, everyone, who voted for him, all the people who listened to him, and all of the people he swore to serve.

It is said he intends to go down fighting, it really doesn’t matter to me as long as he goes down.

On a personal note, I am once again at a loss to understand my fellow man. The story comes to us again and again, every time we come to the end we discover we just started at the beginning.

One day,  men will be paying reparations to every woman and person of color on the earth.

The only thing I can offer is that power affects many men in the most awful and still little-understood of ways. Something about being powerful triggers some hideous release of genes, and permits them to take over the mind.

A man like Cuomo can seem to have everything, to have the brightest prospects, the most interesting work, loyal and devoted aides and followers.

He can be smart and handsome and rich, he can have had every success in the world and yet still be broken inside, and still need to dominate and humiliate women, to abuse and harass and diminish them, and still be ignorant of the changing world around them.

Power seems to make them mad.

Just look around you, Governor. Do you really believe you can put your hand underneath the blouse of a state worker and squeeze her breasts and get away with it? Or ask a state trooper guarding you about her sex life?

And why would you need to?

I remember a respected producer I knew well when I was working at CBS News. We got drunk together one night and he told me that he had a powerful sex drive, and he was worried that he might bring it to the office. Instead, he found a sex worker on the  Upper East Side, he hired her when he felt the powerful urgest that he often felt.

I was shocked by this, but then he explained it to me: “I decided to find a prostitute and pay her well, and treating her well was by far preferable to turning these instincts on the women who work with me and for me. I never want to be one of those men.”

And he wasn’t.

When I thought about what he told me, I remember thinking I admired him for his sensitivity and foresight. The women who worked for him appreciated him and respected him, and felt heard and respected themselves.

They never saw sensed a trace of his impulses. He had a long, good career and retired with honor.

Some things are just beyond me. I like what my doctor friend told me – powerful men often seem to have powerful sex drives.

Some see it as a potential danger to themselves and others, some think they are Gods, beyond the reach or accountability of mortal men. We are learning to beware of them.

Andrew Cuomo will be pondering that for the rest of his life. Some day I will feel sorry for him.

Isn’t that what empathy is all about?

“There’s two kinds of evil that horror fiction always deals with. One kind is the sort of evil that comes from inside people, like in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The other kind of evil is predestined evil. It falls on you like a stroke of lightning. That’s the scary stuff…”

– Stephen King.

 

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14 February

The Power Of Propaganda And The New Jews (Liberals, Democrats). The Rise Of Gullibility And Cynicism

by Jon Katz

When I fled my first college to live and write in New York City, I took only one class at my new school, The New School For Social Research. The course was taught by the brilliant Hannah Arendt, a Holocaust refugee, and the world’s most prominent moral philosopher.

In just a few hours, she changed how I saw the world and the importance of seeking a moral life.

It was an amazing class, the only lectures I attended before dropping out of college to begin my career as a reporter. I couldn’t wait any longer to tell stories rather than hear them from others.

Like other admirers of her writing this past year, I thought of Arendt and her hands and teachings about totalitarianism.

How sad she wasn’t alive to write about Donald Trump and the chilling movement he helped create.

Her words and insights have been echoing in my mind all during the Trump years and especially during this latest impeachment trial, which turned out to be a stunning and somewhat horrifying lesson in how totalitarianism works, step by step, to corrode democracy, perhaps the most fragile form of government in the world.

Evil is banal, not spectacular, Arendt argued, it isn’t difficult to get very ordinary people to do great harm. The world is full of the gullible and the disenchanted.

I should say upfront that Germany and Italy in the 1930s were very different from America now. I am not one for Nazi comparisons to our times, but there are similarities, and they do need to be discussed.

We have a fierce and ingrained notion of freedom here; we are the only nation on the earthborn with the idea that all people are equal and free, even if they are not always free.

We are much more complex, and ungovernable population than Germany was. Kings and tyrants had been telling people what to do for centuries in European cultures.

We don’t like to be told what to do here.

I don’t think America will ever be conquered or dominated by any single political force; we are way too ornary and independent as a nation.

I don’t think the totalitarians here are out to slaughter people, just compassion and integrity, the two biggest obstacles they face.

I remember that Arendt spoke and wrote eloquently on the ease with which so-called “civilized” societies can slip and stumble at the hands of cynics and weak-minded citizens.

The Trump presidency was full of heart-sinking and disturbing moments, but I think the impeachment trial may have been the worst for me to deal with.

For some years now, anti-democratic political ideologies have been waging war on the politics of liberal democracy and respectability – the elements they call elitism.

They have drawn the almost total support of powerful corporations and a corporate culture that values nothing more than high profits, a powerless workforce, and a weak government that will leave them alone.

The totalitarian movement, in recent years the focus of the Republican Party,  has cynically and continuously attacked liberals, established politicians,  progressives, “socialists,” bipartisan representatives, academics, and scientists.

They have relentlessly weeded out dissenters, critics, and traditionalists, making it a cultural and political crime to disagree openly – the very heart of the democratic experiment. In Republican words, they have begun to “sensor” anyone who thinks independently.

Stalin and Hitler would have taken them out and shot them.

This demand for total obedience was the driving force behind every fascistic or totalitarian movement of the century.

The genius of the far right is that their vast and growing propaganda movement has turned the very meaning of patriotism upside down – treason is defending our democracy, patriotism is breaking it down.

The totalitarian movement has used mass propaganda to persuade a vast audience that the poor are to blame for being poor, that immigrants and refugees are a danger and drain on our resources, that government aid programs are a gift to the lazy and dishonest, that guns are an essential and absolutely protected element of democracy and that political opponents are evil, dangers to be thwarted and assaulted, distrusted and challenged at every turn.

If you don’t fight, said Trump, you will wake up to find your country gone. We nearly did wake up to see our country gone, but it was the loudest people with the giant flags doing the wrecking.

This is the same language, the same techniques the Nazis used to dehumanize Jews, gays, gypsies, Catholics, opposing politicians, and political critics. To get rid of people or defeat them, you have to dehumanize them.

Then you have to banish them from any power, or even better, lock ’em up.

The congress members – especially the liberal ones – were so dehumanized by January 6 that a horde of thugs thought it was moral and even legal to stalk and capture or kill them. One vowed to put a bullet in Nancy Pelosi’s head if they could find her.

Almost all of those arrested said they were surprised to learn what they were doing was a crime – wasn’t it what the President of the United States had asked them to do to save the country?

We all know what Trump was trying to do; we all know he was guilty. This is the era where truth does not matter, as many elitists understand it.

The question tormenting so many people are why doesn’t that matter any longer?

The answer is that just as Hannah Arendt observed, gullibility and cynicism are a toxic and dangerous mix.

Every totalitarian movement needs its Jews – or immigrants, dissenters, or elitists. It needs somebody to hate and fear.

Our new totalitarian movement has found theirs – anyone who supports liberal democracy. Anyone who believes scientists pays attention to journalists, respects established political leaders, immigrants, refugees, or anyone who understands the value of dissent or resent being lied to.

We saw the impact of this over the past week. We noticed that there was now an audience ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how false or even absurd, and which did not resent or object to being deceived because it held every statement on both sides to be a lie anyway.

This is now a mainstream and radical revision of the very idea of truth. This is perhaps the most significant thing we have to deal with. Would anyone think about a Secretary Of Truth?

It might well be the most important Cabinet Position.

Truth is not what we know to be accurate but what we wish to be true. That is perhaps Trump’s most destructive legacy; it will take an extraordinary leader and many other people to bring truth back.

“The totalitarian mass leaders,” Arendt wrote in  her landmark work The Origins of Totalitarianism, “based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.”

In simple English, whatever works. Grievance is the Windex of lies, it just brushes them away as unimportant.

Just about everyone at the impeachment knows that the charges against Donald Trump were correct – he led and inspired an insurrection against the most sacred of all American political traditions – the peaceful transfer of power – yet the burgeoning propaganda arm he also inspired- defended him.

They suggested he didn’t mean it; the Democrats do the same thing, leftists, not the far right, plotted against the capitol.

The way the Republicans talk about liberals reminds me of the way the Nazi’s talked about Jews in pre-war Germany; those parallels are chillingly real, except it’s not the Jews they are after, thanks in part to Evangelical Christians who support Israel: the political left has been relentlessly de-humanized, denounced as generating (even as pedophiles) as elitist, socialist, communist liars and schemers who would literally destroy the nation if they take or are permitted to hold power.

Most often, Democrats are presented as a kind of wild animal, vicious, corrupt, and power-mad. Trump has been spouting this rhetoric every day for years now, and his congressional enablers have been nodding their heads – it should be no surprise it got into a lot of heads.

Totalitarian leaders and ideologues – the Republican Party has now earned itself this label – believe that the end justifies the means; this makes it easier for followers to accept the lie as a tactical move, even to support it – and to accept the next lie, and the thousands that come after it, and the ones after that.

Once you accept the idea that it’s okay for leaders to lie, says Arendt, you’ve taken the first big step towards a totalitarian government.

Mitch McConnell openly admits that Donald Trump was guilty as charged. He had no choice but to support him, he said, because he isn’t a sitting president.

How neat an escape hole that was.

What he didn’t say in his ground-breakingly hypocritical speech was that he was the one who made sure Trump was out of power when the impeachment trial began – he said he wouldn’t permit the Senate to start the trial, giving Trump enough time to leave the office.

Thus, the lie is a brilliant and successful tactical move – Trump was not found guilty. It’s not only fine; it’s admirable and patriotic. It worked.

Propaganda is different from the truth. Over time, the truth has proven to be a powerful political force. It was this year in America.

Being a hypocrite is no lie, it is just a matter of being crafty or being smart. Trump’s lives have horrified anyone raised in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

But to his followers and partners in the Republican Party, each lie is another example of how brave and determined, how savvy and strong he is.

Each lie is justified because it is aimed at the new Jews of the moment- the elitists and Democrats – who are so depraved and dangerous that stopping them is patriotic, not a seditious act. This is a world that doesn’t need opponents to keep them honest because they are not honest, to begin with.

Trump, and in this sense he is like Hitler, frequently called Democrats “monsters, enemies of the people.” Those words do have consequences, we also learned that on January 6.

Progressives are obsessed with wondering how people can accept all those lies and deceptions. But people aren’t “accepting” the lies; they are celebrating them. They are not a symptom or side effect; they are the point.

Trump’s defense team – closely coached by Republican Senators who support Donald Trump – assumed, as Trump always has, that their audience is both gullible and cynical.

They were right.

Here is what they were asked to accept and what almost all of them took: that contrary to the overwhelming legal opinion, Trump, a former president, shouldn’t be subject to impeachment proceedings, that he hadn’t meant to incite violence, and was, in fact, “horrified” by it; that he had no way of knowing his supporters had invaded the Capitol (even though he was recorded urging them to do it), that he had never said or meant to say that violence was what he wanted, or more simply, that any of this meant anything.

Trump didn’t invite the insurrection, they insist, but we all know he did – Mitch McConnell admitted that he did, he said it on live TV. Trump lost the election. Still, he really won it by a landslide, it wasn’t stolen, but it was, his supporters didn’t storm the capitol, Antifa did, as Trump told the House Republican Leader, Kevin McCarthy, over the phone.

This is more or less how carnival barkers take money from people; they talk so fast, lie so well and quickly, spin so many different stories that the truth is easy to drown out and impossible to find.

Leader McCarthy, who the mob could have killed, knows Trump didn’t lift a finger for hours to stop the riot because McCarthy was on the phone with the President begging him – shouting at him –  to intervene.

But he had no problems flying down to Mar-A-Largo to kiss the ass of the man who nearly killed a lot of innocent police officers and members of Congress. They did manage to kill six or seven.

Totalitarianism worships people – strong men and demag0gues usually – not constitutions and countries.

Arendt wrote that the qualities of gullibility and cynicism were present in different proportions in fascist countries depending on a person’s place in the hierarchy of the totalitarian movement.

A Senator is, by nature, more cynical than the broken but ideologically driven and accepting “patriots” who stormed the capitol. The first wave of interviews suggests that rank-and-file conspiracy theorists are, by definition, the most gullible of all.

Everything is possible in this world, and nothing has any real meaning. There is no truth to cling to, only the absence of both fact and mercy.

“There is no question, none – that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day,” said Mitch McConnell on the floor of the U.S. Senate. “No question about it.”

This was cynicism as its most tortured and brilliant best. There is no question that Trump is guilty, but let’s not risk any Republican politicians by finding him guilty and facing his supporters’ wrath. Let’s hide behind a bureaucratic procedural rationale that politicians call “giving cover.”

This was McConnell’s gift to his senators; they get to go home and tell their followers that they supported their leader, even though he was guilty. Tsk-tsk, you know how Trump is.

And being guilty seems to be no problem for Trump’s supporters.

I’m not yet ready for the hand-wringing I read and hear so much about. It is easy to forget that we are not Germany in the 1920s and ’30s. We have a rich tradition of democracy and an entrenched civic and judicial structure and bureaucracy.

Trump was defeated, not re-elected.

Every single court stood up for democracy; not one turned against it. There are many totalitarian flunkies in different states worldwide; they are politicians. They do what politicians do to put their fingers up to the wind and follow the breeze.

That is very different from the world of Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini.  Trump is no Hitler.  He is not nearly as smart or efficient. But the lessons about totalitarianism are important, as is dehumanizing and demonizing of opponents.

One of the great dangers of people like Trump is that they use their feral instincts to gain support, but they often fail to grasp the importance of what they are doing.

There is little doubt he instigated the insurrection, but I’m at all sure that he knew what he was doing. He usually doesn’t/

Germany was never as diverse as America is. Women never had as much power as women are gaining; people of color were never as numerous, connected, and organized as Black Lives matter is now. There were never so many yellow and brown people.

The Nazis never faced intense and wealthy and culturally save urban centers as Trump did and his successors will.

And we have a Democratic President with considerable power. Biden will almost certainly bring the pandemic to the ground and lift the economy.

This will not crush the totalitarian impulses, nor will it change their ideas about truth and facts. Prosperity might do that, or time, or the rise of charismatic leaders who can inspire people in a different direction.

The week left me angry, tired, and a bit sad.

But I am far from hopeless, as this year also demonstrated. Freedom is worth fighting for. This year I learned that many millions of people are willing to fight for it.

 

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15 January

Our Government Is In Control. The Monster Is Trapped In His Cage. His Hair Growth Medication Is Failing!

by Jon Katz

We’ve come a long way this year, those of us who love democracy and pray for a kinder, gentler nation.

And we have a long ways to go.

It is important to keep this in mind: Trump was defeated, he is leaving office in five days, he is as powerless and trapped as a sitting President can be. A new President and a new government are taking over. Things will change.

Today, Trump reminds me of a bird trapped in a cage. He can’t even sing out anymore. Whatever he does will be wrong.

Our government and civic structure remain strong and in control; there are already more police officers and soldiers guarding the capitol than protesters who came to storm it.

Reporters who cover disasters and catastrophes know that bureaucracies authorities always underestimate danger until it is upon them.

And they always overreact to it once it appears, in part to distract their critics.

Usually, big disasters only occur once.  Governments protect themselves. Terrorists always try to think of something new.

As 911 taught the police, it is impossible to think of everything that might happen or anticipate all of the millions of choices terrorists and criminals, and lunatics might make.

Bureaucracies always focus on what they know, not what they don’t or can’t.

This was unprecedented.

No mob of thousands of Americans had ever attacked an iconic government building in that way before, so no one really expected it to happen or was ready for it.

They were much more concerned with “optics,” how things might look, not how things really are. That is what complacency is.

We are now subject to what the authorities like to call “an abundance of caution” and a tsunami of predictable warnings about this just being the beginning and all 50 statehouses in all 50 states are in great danger. The people in charge of security are protecting themselves, and supposedly, us.

Back to Armageddon. Keep that war machine money flowing.

Those institutions responsible for our security aren’t dwelling on why they failed but keeping us terrified about what’s just around the corner.

We just want it to be taken care of.

I’m sure there will be some protests this week, some violent.

But we are not all under imminent attack as a nation, and there will not be 50 state houses under siege.

Since it was founded, the FBI has specialized in busting up groups that pushed for radical change, some good and some bad. This was J.EdgardHoover’s primary obsession.

The bureau has always been used by the government to knock down movements they considered extreme or threatening. And none of the people in those movements stormed the capitol and peed all over the floors.

The critics are right about one thing: if those were African-Americans or Communists breaking down doors, the capitol steps would have run red with blood.

The FBI knows how to do it; ask the anarchists, the KKK, civil rights protestors, labor organizers, communists, and socialists of the past.

Now it’s the white nationalist’s turn. Trust me; they will not be gloating long.

This is a good moment to slow down and take a deep breath. And step back a bit.

Our world is different from the one we lived in a week or so again and different from the one we faced before November.

We are learning that Donald Trump’s threat to overturn the November election by any means necessary was not a joke but was very real.

As close as it came to a bloodbath, it failed almost completely to carry out its real goals. Vice President Pence was not hung, the election was not overturned, the certification was not delayed,  Joe Biden will be President, and Donald Trump is not staying in the White House.

The capitol’s riot has awakened the vast national security and police apparatus installed in America the years since 911. They are extraordinarily powerful and well equipped.

And if you are the kind of insurrectionists who like to take selfies and tape videos for your hate-based website, this is not a bear you want to wake up.

They say if you go after the King, you better kill the King. The same is true of government. If you aim for insurrection, you can’t just settle for smearing shit on the walls and stealing stuff and bragging to Mom on your cell.

If you don’t kill it, it will come after you, and the history of insurrections does not favor the mobs who try it and fail.

The attack on the capital came from an unexpected place and in a shockingly brutal way – no one ever guessed that our own President would be the next Osama Bin Laden – but as we can see, the country is more than prepared to defend itself.

They’ve been militarizing the police and the National Guard for years now. Just ask the demonstrators in Portland and Layfayette Square.

The rioters claim that they support the police, but they seem to know nothing about them. Nor are they reluctant to spray them with bear spray, beat them and steal their equipment.

The capitol police couldn’t handle this mob, but that left between 4 to 6 million police and security and government and local police officers to wake up and come running and deploy.

And get even.

There are already 20,000 National Guard soldiers in Washington, and thousands of additional police forces are pouring into the city.

The doofuses and bigots who stormed the capitol are cowards and thieves and not especially bright. They will not be marching on the capitol again, certainly not this coming week.

Watching them on those videos, I was grateful they were not real terrorists, the toll would have been so much higher.

What’s different?

Donald Trump was defeated and is, at the moment, powerless.

He has lost his Twitter Feed, his umbilical core, to the Christian-White Nationalist Movement that attacked the capitol.

He has lost sponsors, friends, aides, donors.

The mobs he summoned have nothing but e-mails and encrypted messages to fuel them without him. Their general, their Uber Fuehrer, their God,  is gone.

All they can do is look for clues. and guess what he wants them to do.

The flunkies and sycophants Donald Trump placed in the national security apparatus, Homeland Security, the Justice Department, and the Pentagon have either resigned, are running for their lives, or have already been pushed out.

If Trump doesn’t shut up and keep quiet, he’ll be forced out and banned from holding federal office. About all, he can safely say is “no violence,” – too little, too late, too false – and to many of his followers, even that is a betrayal.

The lawyers for several of the rioters who were arrested are asking Trump to grant pardons for the people who answered his call to combat.

After all, said one lawyer, his client was just doing what the President of the United States asked him to do.

Without his Twitter account, which he depended on too much, he has no megaphone, no way to feed his ego or manipulate the millions of weak-minded Americans desperate for a leader to love. His followers made the wrong choice.

In media terms, he put all of his eggs in one basket. now he is at the mercy of the others.

The Republican Party, the mainstay of his political power in Washington, has already erupted into civil war over Trump’s evil deeds. Mitch McConnell, Mike Pence, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy have all split from Trump and support the idea of impeachment, while not committed to voting for it.

Trump no longer can dictate to or intimidate the leaders of Homeland Security, the FBI, or the scores of other government agencies, some secret, who are supposed to be protecting us.

Several FBI agents have told reporters they didn’t pursue the white nationalists because they knew the Justice Department under Trump would not prosecute their cases. President’s are powerful, we are just learning how powerful.

They really have nothing to fear from Donald Trump now; he is a wounded stag, bleeding all over the place, crippled and pathetic.

What, exactly, were all those billions of dollars in post 911 money good for when the very heart of our democracy can be overwhelmed by a crowd like that?

Trust what you see. It won’t happen again.

And maybe, just maybe, we got another wake-up call, just like Trump himself has turned out to be, that came just in the nick of time.

It becomes clearer by the day that these powerful agencies have been intimidated by the President and his enablers,  infected with his hack and crony political appointees, and reluctant to investigate people the President and his flunkies have been winking at for years and will not prosecute.

Imagine what he would have done to us in four more years; I always pause to be grateful he is going.

On the same day as the capitol was attacked, Trump supporters in Congress were still claiming that the rioters were really members of the dread but invisible Antifa, posing at Trump supporters. Why didn’t we think of that?

Some things really are as bad as they seem; Charlottesville was one, the Capitol Insurrection was another. Perhaps next time, we won’t ignore the first thing.

A few weeks ago, the Justice Department was run by William Barr, who sacrificed his reputation and the department he headed to make  Donald Trump happy and act as his personal attorney.

Imagine if he were still in charge?

In law enforcement terms, the brutish attack on the capitol was a grievous mistake by Trump and a fringe movement that touted itself “Blue Lives Matter” but didn’t hesitate to attack, threaten, murder, beat and maim police officers.

They will pay for that, their hypocrisy was laid bare.

Trump supporters may be tribal, but there is no tighter and more fiercely supportive tribe than police officers, whose faith is to rush to the aid of one another when there is trouble, as they did at the capitol.

They might not like liberals, but they really don’t like people who drag officers down marble steps and steal their guns.

America’s police took an awful beating in 2020, tarred by one dubious police shooting after another and protests all over the country. This is their moment to shine.h

The capitol attacks and the aftermath offer a powerful opportunity for them to be heroes again, and the people who stole their guns and dragged them down marble steps will regret it.

The la-la-land rioters were angered and surprised to learn that the police were not ready to drop their guns and help them take Nancy Pelosi hostage.

They really thought it was Lexington and Concord 2.0. I thought patriots were supposed to love their country.

They may be dangerous, but they are not going to be successful. Like Trump himself, they are miserable strategists.

They are getting a reality lesson, as the FBI fans out all over the country to arrest them and bust up their insurrectionist covens.

Some of them claim a victory, but that is reassuring: they are just as dumb as they appeared to be.

At long last, Trump is trapped in a deep hole of his making. He has no good options; since the Capitol Attack, Trump’s Approval Rating Has Plummeted At A Record Rate.

Not only do a growing majority of Americans blame him for the riot at the Capitol and favor removing him from office, but his job approval rating has fallen faster in recent days than at any point in his presidency.

In front of Trump, there looms no peaceful retirement.

He faces a second impeachment trial, maybe some criminal investigations.

If he tries to halt or slow investigations into the white nationalist groups who almost universally support him or provoke more violence, he risks an impeachment conviction or investigations by an unleased U.S. Justice Department and FBI.

It would be in Trump’s personal self-interest to take responsibility for the assault on the Capitol and condemn the violence in much more sincere and persuasive terms than he has done.

That would give his supporters something to offer in his defense. He just can’t. There is no defense apart from the mythical Antifa. The world is laughing over the stated desire of the Republican Party to unify the country. Remarkable gall.

For the past year, and especially the past few months, Trump’s illness has taken him over and destroyed his judgment. The shrinks say that happens to sociopaths with too much power.

It drives them mad.

Finally, it overtook him. He seems spent and flailing.

Aides to Trump say one of the reasons he fought so hard to overturn the November election – at this point, they say, he actually believes he won – is that he is worried about the many lawsuits, investigations, and loan payments he faces when he leaves office.

If he stayed in the White House, he could have fended off many of them.

He’s raised nearly $300 million in his war against our democracy, and he will need every penny of it.

It’s too much to say this is all good news, the best news would have been for June 6 never to have happened, and the free and fair election never to have been called into question.

But there is no question that America’s compelling and entrenched civic architecture and structure has held up and held together. Our government may be divided, but it is also big, fat, and very well-armed.

The situation is under control.

The government is under control.

Joe Biden is now moving to take the spotlight away from Donald Trump and focus it on the coronavirus and the economy.

Last night, he laid out a $1.9 trillion emergency relief plan to finally assault the coronavirus and also prop up a rapidly deteriorating economy.

Ultimately, these two steps will do more to change the political divisions that have paralyzed the country than any harm Trump can promote from his castle in Florida.

The President is just beginning to realize that he will be spending a lot of money on lawyers and a lot of time in court. I hate what he has done to our country, but I am grateful not to live in his tortured head.

It feels like we are still grappling with a nightmare – and we are – but the light always follows the darkness, and there is much to cheer and be hopeful about.

We haven’t gotten the break we hoped for and richly deserve.

So peace and hope will need to come from inside of us. I’m game.  It will take a good while for things to settle down.

That’s where we stand.

Our government is strong and healthy and in firm control of the country. The demons are on the run.

According to a recently resigned aide, the worst news of all for the President is that his hair growth medication, the prostate-related drug Finasteride is no longer working to stem his hair loss.

This aide reports that Trump recently fired his personal hair and head dresser in Washington and is seeking another one, perhaps in Florida, where there are many older people with lots of hair big and colorful beyond their age.

I’m sure in the midst of all these troubles, he will be hiring another hair expert soon to build up that nest on his head or maybe even consider a wig.

Trump is a man who always looks in the mirror but can never find the man he wants to be.

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