Larry Beck

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      in World Politics

      The Time for a Just and Equitable Society

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      While keeping a wary eye on the Republican Party bloodbath from a safe distance, it is probably time to get a grip on the Democratic Party, shake really hard, and hope that what comes pouring out is a commitment to the progressive policy agenda that so many in the party have worked so hard to define. This is not the time to cave in again to the nonsense about the perfect being the enemy of the good, a phrase that so quickly drips off the lips of those who promise a good game but are never willing to risk anything to realize that promise.

      It should be easy to start with two simple propositions, each of which by now must be considered essential to any principled American social order after having been fully exposed like never before by the pandemic lens. It is way beyond time for universal access to meaningful health care to be the law of the land, not some dumbed-down public/private partnership, but the real thing. And it is way beyond time to double the minimum wage because no one can be expected to meet even the basic necessities of life at a pay rate of $7.25 per hour. That amounts to $15,080 per year, generally without benefits or paid leave, so don’t get sick, feed your kids from a real grocery store, live in a decent place or go anywhere.

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      I don’t care about handwringing, I don’t care about the national debt (only raised as a problem when America tries to spend more on social programs), I don’t care about compromise, and I sure as hell don’t care about sanctimonious talk of incremental change where these two issues are concerned. The only people in favor of incremental change are those who already have access to meaningful health care and those making a whole lot more than $7.25 an hour. If you want to see what unanimity looks like, take a poll on these issues among those working for minimum wage pay with no benefits.

      Moreover, even with respect to these two most fundamental components of any moral and just society’s collective response to those in the community writ large, there will be no Republican Party legislative support at all. So, Democrats, sit down and have a meeting, draft legislation to address these two priorities now, and then ram it down the legislative throats of anyone in the way. President Joe Biden will sign the bills, and then we can move on to other priorities, having finally demonstrated that Democrats can promise what is right and deliver on that promise.

      There will be a lot more because there is a lot more that needs to be done and because progressives have long studied the problems, have responsible solutions, and they and their constituencies are really tired of waiting. With the COVID-19 pandemic still raging and causing continued disease, death and economic disruption, it goes without saying that a broad range of public health and economic relief measures will be an overarching priority in these early days of the Biden administration. However, these are mitigation and relief measures seeking to restore a way of life for many that is always secured at the expense of weaker others.

      “Build Back Better”

      That is another way of saying that it is impossible to restore a balance that never existed in the first place. As we watch the battle play out in America for something as fundamental today as vaccine distribution equity, try to project your view onto the daily lives of those who almost always are on the inequity side of the balance equation. Many of these people aren’t even on the vaccine playing field because they are too busy looking for food for their family, affordable housing, enough education to give their kids a chance in life and enough wages to meet basic needs. When they get that taken care of by the end of the day, they can go online to check out the latest vaccine opportunities and the multiple bus routes needed to get there.

      Embed from Getty Images

      It isn’t just that inequities exist — it is that way too many among us seem to believe that to be an acceptable norm. I don’t know why this pisses me off so much, but it does. For how long and through how many pitiful iterations of America’s “greatness” have Americans of supposed goodwill noted the poverty and hopelessness in their midst and bemoaned racial and social divides that dehumanize, all while happily building monuments to consumption and unregulated capitalism that always attempt to give greed a good name? No more. Ya no más.

      There is so much to change for the better and so little apparent political will to change much of anything that it is hard to imagine what Biden means when he says he wants the nation to “build back better.” To my ear, that sounds a lot like a slogan to inspire Americans to create little more than a glossier version of whatever the nation looked like “before,” maybe even something like making America “great” again.

      To many people of color, the poor, the homeless, the hungry, the undereducated and the sick, what it looked like “before” will take more than a catchy slogan to fix. In the weeks ahead, watch the public discourse, the constant reference to an undefined return to “normal,” and most importantly, how quickly any broad consensus about the need to confront long-neglected fundamental reform gets lost in detail and division.

      More Than Words

      Beyond the pandemic’s public health and relief measures lie critical commitments to invest now in America’s failing infrastructure, to implement comprehensive and humane immigration reform, to develop a meaningful and likely inconvenient national and international response to climate change, to address the nation’s epidemic of gun violence, and to renew and reinvigorate regulatory frameworks for the financial, energy and communication sectors. Then, if any of this is to be truly transformative, it will have to be done with racial justice and economic equity at the core of meeting each of these critical commitments.

      The challenges are great and the moment may be fleeting. Democratic Party leadership and its progressive allies have to actively drive each other to take advantage of this moment to give birth to another round of renewed hope in America. That having been said, it will take more than words to do so, after so many failed promises.

      The place to start is with those two simple propositions mentioned earlier. Demonstrating that universal access to meaningful health care can be realized now and that the dignity of work and economic participation inherent in a living wage can be realized now could do much to convince those in need that the rest of the progressive policy agenda is possible to achieve.

      In a political world filled with hyperbole, credibility is a good foundation on which to build the long-term political power necessary to deliver on the promise of a more just and equitable society.

      *[A version of this article was co-published on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      The Fringe Feeds a Familiar Narrative

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      Finally, it has come to pass in the land of the free and the home of the brave that the cancerous core of America’s Republican Party is in full metastasis, spreading its poisonous tentacles far into the body politic. There is so little substantive pushback from Republican Party “leadership” that the spread of the disease threatens not only the party but the institutional integrity of the nation as a whole. The only good news is that unchecked cancers usually destroy the host.

      In this case, it might just be the best outcome. The fringe has morphed into the identity of the Republican Party so completely that somewhat hinged used-to-be Republicans don’t stand a chance of turning this around. But they don’t deserve another chance, having previously sold their souls to Ronald Reagan’s vision of undermined governance and unchecked capitalism as a means to a better end. Many Americans are just now beginning to figure out how poorly that has actually worked out for them.

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      The spectacle of the Republican Party dancing around their new poster child, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, is a bit like watching some moron taking a selfie at the edge of a cliff only to realize as she falls that the rope around your waist is tethered to her waist. Republicans should have known that they would be in trouble when their old Uncle Mitch warned them that that rope was a bad idea.

      Since Greene is no ordinary moron teetering at the edge of a cliff, she has been empowered to drive the Trump narrative as a creed for both the party and the nation. Then there is the newly crowned “conscience” of the Republican House leadership, Representative Liz Cheney. She covered herself in “glory” by voting to impeach Trump for sedition and inciting an insurrection, and then a few scant weeks later covered herself in dung by failing to take the minimal step of removing Greene from her committee assignments. I can only guess, but maybe she used up her family allotment of “conscience” on that first vote.

      If you are wondering about the top guns in the Republican congressional orbit, you would be wondering about Mitch McConnell, now Senate minority leader, and the wannabe speaker of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy. These two supported the whole Trump national trauma for four years and then, faced with armed insurrection inside the Capitol, still can’t say never again. And they still can’t clearly and unequivocally hold Trump responsible for his incitement of the mob.

      Republican Frauds

      Let me be clear about one thing: Even though there are those trying to proclaim themselves newly-crowned “heroes” of the Republican Party, they are all frauds of one kind or another. This includes the Lincoln Project crowd and the host of “former” Republicans trying desperately to resurrect their right-wing version of their right-wing party. Today’s self-proclaimed Republican heroes did everything they could to torch the Affordable Care Act, have for decades pushed scandalous tax relief for the wealthy, and have promoted some version of unregulated capitalism through which their personal greed could thrive amid the economic distress of so many others.

      And that doesn’t even reach the infamy of a political party and its adherents who have for those same decades fueled racial animus and anti-immigrant sentiment in the country for political and personal gain. Before trying to find virtue amid the wreck of the Republican Party, remember that the party and its minions are now, and have for those decades, promoted the delusional “American exceptionalism” so comforting to their white base and so destructive of a meaningful confrontation with the nation’s past that is rooted in the truth.

      Embed from Getty Images

      As with the racists in their midst that Trump legitimized and encouraged, any welcome unmasking of these new Republican “heroes” is long overdue. Some of them served a useful purpose in giving voice to the national disaster that was the Trump presidency. But none of them has given us any reason to believe that the recent past has engendered a new and truly inclusive vision for a policy partnership with Democrats that could begin to legislate a better future for those who have watched and waited for so long.

      The coronavirus pandemic has done more than even a close reading of history and outraged truth telling could have done to lay bare the moral and institutional bankruptcy that is America today. Systemic racism is finally on the lips of a US president because it has to be. Huge health care, housing, educational and economic deficits are everywhere to be seen, and now so obvious that ignoring them again would be yet another epic betrayal.

      To understand the depth of that betrayal and the Republican Party’s role in it requires a clear understanding that the kind old Republican “hero,” Ronald Reagan, cravenly gave white America a clear path away from the promise of the civil rights movement. That same national “hero” told the nation that government was the problem, not the solution and then set about to prove it on the backs of those most dependent on good government to realize a share of America’s bounty. Other Republican Party “heroes” willingly followed in those soiled footsteps.

      This is not to say that there is a purity of vision or spirit in the Democratic Party. Rather it is to say that America’s way forward cannot depend on either the cooperation or the acquiescence of Republicans. If you doubt this, the spectacle of the Trump impeachment trial in progress will again demonstrate the depths to which the Republican Party has sunk in its drive to regain power at all cost. A disgraced former president with the blood of hundreds of thousands of citizens already on his hands who delivered insurrection to the Capitol will continue to command Republican loyalty and get it.

      A Message for Biden

      So, President Joe Biden, don’t waste a minute on them. Don’t repeat the mistakes you and Barack Obama made from 2008 forward. Go all in this time. With those same Republicans already at work legislating new voter suppression measures where they can, your time to act may be short. In doing so, remember every day that closing the human value gap in America is essential to any attempt to reach for a better nation.

      And whatever else you do, President Biden, remember every day that systemic racism is the original sin that begat today’s deeply flawed America. Telling the truth about that is America’s irreplaceable first step forward.

      *[This article was co-published on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      America Is Not Done Yet

      by

      Some of us have known for a long time that eventually the rest of the world would catch up with the lies at the core of America’s notion of itself. That we would be found out, exposed. Well, here we are. After decades of selling “democracy” at the point of a gun in other people’s lands, America’s capital city was secured by those same guns in order to ensure the “peaceful” transfer of power. All those guns were likely made in America.

      For a moment, watching Trump skulk out of the presidency to the tune of a 21-gun salute that he ordered for himself was too poetic not to enjoy. Then, it fell quickly to the new president, Joe Biden, to pick up the pieces of a nation in turmoil. Every commentator and pundit, including me, has a long list of what is wrong and a shorter list of how to make it right. So much was wrong before Trump, and four years of Trump and his cabal have made so much that was wrong so much worse.

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      President Biden has one big immediate advantage going forward — he is not Trump. And for a nation watching its soul die a little more each day amid the pandemic, just having a national leader with a heart that beats and a moral compass that projects empathy and understanding will lift the nation on its own for a little while. To sustain the advantage, Biden will have to prove that he and his administration can deliver a national plan for confronting the pandemic.

      The sad truth is that Americans, lots of them, have done their part to make the nation what it looks like today. I cannot help but remember all those unmasked boobs who shouted about their freedom as they took away mine, all those callous young people who thought “their” party would be just fine and then went home to spread disease and death to loved ones and anyone else who got in their way, and all the people who still don’t want to pay those “essential” workers a living wage after seeing what they did for us every time we made it to the grocery store or put out the trash.

      America Is Not Done

      The nation is not done with its turmoil, not by a long shot. The allure of “normal” can be a prescription for a return to normal. However, what was normal to the fortunate can never again be allowed to overwhelm the reality for so many for whom “normal” is defined by poverty, racism, poor education, substandard housing and limited access to limited health care. If you are comfortable with that normal for so many, you are likely to continue to be unmoved by the image of hungry children on your next journey to the spa, country club or suburban church.

      It was easy to be hopeful for a day as a beautifully choreographed presidential inauguration unfolded. On January 20, President Biden gave a galvanizing inauguration address and then immediately set to work undoing the symbols of as much of Trump as he could touch with the stroke of a pen. But, amid the pomp and celebration, here we are again, where we have been so many times before — seeking unity, seeking a moral response and seeking justice.

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      Every “renewal,” almost every protest march, and almost every Martin Luther King Day, someone reminds the nation that “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Now, yet one more time, America is beginning the long journey with that first single step. How come we have to do this over and over again? What about the steps that follow if the journey is ever to be completed? It remains so disheartening that Americans need to take that first step again in the fight for a nation that is finally unchained from the fundamental lies that stain its collective soul.

      Some of these lies are old lies, some are as new as yesterday. America is a shining beacon on some hill to some because it has loudly proclaimed itself to be. America is the world’s last best hope to some but only because it has loudly proclaimed itself to be. And Americans have always been ready to indiscriminately kill others for our nation’s honor or cause, without ever making the connection between them and us.

      While this discussion needs to be about more than systemic racism and racial justice, the homegrown lies about race in America are so profound and so undermine any moral high ground that those lies have to be collectively addressed before addressing any of the other lies will be taken seriously by those who understand the pernicious impact of the lies. When all is said and done, white Americans can only be freed from the burden of the lies by moving far beyond their continued repetition.

      Racial Reckoning

      Much will be said in the months ahead about “reckonings” in both the racial context and the accountability context. Racial reckoning has long been a subject of fierce debate in America, and now, with pandemic negligence, corruption and insurrection leading a parade of official misconduct, accountability will need to be reckoned with as well. Centuries of failed racial reckoning can serve as a guide to the difficulty of national reckoning in any context. Lies have been allowed to overshadow history when repeated over and over again, when believing them seems so much easier than confronting them.

      While it is hard to define a formula for success, reckoning is not a process — it is an end result. The journey to reckoning is the hard part, with racial reckoning and accountability among the most difficult journeys to complete. While neither may require the full journey of a thousand miles to be achieved, neither will ever be achieved after only one step and a few more to follow.

      To escape the past, Americans have to seize the present moment and finally take something more than those first steps on the long journey forward. It would be a good start to simply commit ourselves to the truth.

      *[A version of this article was co-published on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      Trump’s Impeachment Should Be Just the Beginning

      by

      Let’s start with a little good news. It appears that a new US president will be inaugurated on January 20, and, when the Congress convenes for the first time after that, there will be a thin Democratic majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Given what has transpired in America over the last four years and the desperate and violent acts at the US Capitol on January 6, this transfer of power may be enough to allow celebration for a moment that a majority of those who voted in the recent elections gave the nation a chance at governance.

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      However, neither a good government nor actual good governance is even close to being assured. First, there will be those, maybe President Biden himself, who will speak to a moderate response to what we have witnessed over the last days and years, and the terrible toll it has taken on so many people. I hope that voices of immoderation prevail when order is restored, at least until the seeds of public accountability have taken root. The good news will not last beyond the virtual inauguration parade unless the new president has nerves of steel and no, I repeat, no illusions about governing in partnership with Republicans in some faux display of “unity.”

      Immoderate Actions

      Moderated responses to immoderate actions are doomed to fail and serve only to further enable those willing to destroy to achieve their ends. In the instant case, there must be a quick and decisive immoderate response, albeit a non-violent response freed from revenge as its motive. That response must be seen as urgent and restorative. If not, this moment will be lost, and the nation will again descend into governmental dysfunction in the face of the multiple challenges of the pandemic, economic disarray, systemic racism and social injustice.

      Embed from Getty Images

      As we anticipate a new day dawning, one of the vestiges of days past should disappear from our discourse — the notion of alternate reality. Not only is there no such thing, but there cannot be such a thing, unless there are also alternate facts. There is reality and there is fantasy. When willful ingestion of fantasy overwhelms reality to drive political agendas and actions, you get the United States of America. It is simply time for this to end.

      The nation cannot expect to move forward while treading water beneath the surface. We must find a way to rescue those souls drowning in a sea of fantasy largely of their own making. I love the First Amendment, but this crucial foundation of America’s constitutional democracy was adopted in 1791. Other than falsely shouting “fire” in a crowded theater, there is little public knowledge about the limitations of free speech, including the extent to which provoking insurrection in a crowded city is protected by the First Amendment. Further, it bears noting that neither the internet nor social media was around in 1791, and that the First Amendment is a prohibition only of governmental activity even in its broadest reading.

      Without attempting a First Amendment primer, it is safe to say that a great many people in America’s delusional home of free speech believe that the right to freedom of speech is some kind of absolute. Since it is not an absolute and has next to nothing to do with private action, it should be safe to note that there is a lot of room to debate the extent to which America’s vile social media cesspool can be subject to limitation and control. Whatever else can be said, the First Amendment is not a license to monetize “free” speech, nor is it a shield that amoral peddlers of snake oil can use to avoid responsibility for the damage caused by their wares.

      Postmortem

      Since much of the fantasy at large in the land, including the fantasies that brought armed thugs to the US Capitol, has been well documented for quite some time, the postmortem review should take a hard look at why it took an armed insurrection to expose a fundamental flaw in the notion that “moderation” can be an effective response to venal delusion when that delusion takes hold in the body politic. And, further, it should consider why it took an armed insurrection to finally raise the stakes on those who generate, spread, consume and defend the fantasies.

      Then there is the tactical disconnect apparent in law enforcement planning and the initial response to what readily should have been seen as a clear and present threat of violence. A mob of white insurrectionists storms the Capitol, with little to no resistance. Meanwhile, pleas for assistance are slow-walked, and the insurrectionists are allowed to calmly walk away from the battered scene of their crime carrying their spoils of war. The inciter-in-chief is absent from the fray, watching it all on television, while his Marie Antoinette seem-a-like is finishing a White House furnishings photo shoot.

      So it goes in benighted America. I can hardly wait for the next Black Lives Matter protest that threatens prompt service at a coffee shop where the police move in to forcefully restore “law and order” at a point of a gun and arrest everyone who is black or cares about pervasive racism. Being a black protester in America just got even more perplexing. Perhaps the key to “peaceful” protest is to wrap yourself and your cause in the American flag or some flag-branded garb that says you and your cause are not a threat to law enforcement or to its cause.

      There finally may be enough palpable outrage among some in the nation’s political class, maybe enough to ensure the security of the presidential inauguration. Meanwhile, the scum is fleeing from Trump’s orbit, leaving in their wake a dysfunctional national government, over 380,000 coronavirus deaths, a vaccination free-for-all and ever-lengthening food lines. I hope that all will be investigated, their professional lives ruined and the guilty eventually charged. That is what accountability looks like to me.

      However, accountability cannot be complete until Donald Trump, his grifter family and his acolytes are driven from our midst, charged with crimes where applicable and shamed into irrelevance. Trump’s second impeachment should be just the beginning. That may seem immoderate, but so be it.

      *[This article was cross-posted on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      2020 Has Shown That We Are Not “Better Than This”

      by

      I hit 75 years old a little over two weeks ago. All in all, I have been lucky throughout my life to have found much to be thankful for as each birthday rolled around on the shortest day of the year. Early on, I couldn’t understand why my birthday was shorter than everyone else’s and was a little bitter about it until I figured out that it was a daylight issue and nothing more sinister than that.

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      While I also had some rough patches, I got through most of them because I had enough good fortune and the resources to help it along. But I have got to tell you that the year that has now drawn to a close has often seemed like a long winding dark tunnel that might never end. While I am sure that there are those not paying much attention, who aimlessly go through life caring only about their moment, I believe that even that comfort seemed hard to find.

      Assault on the Human Spirit

      It is not just the pandemic that has blighted the landscape for those paying attention. It was a year that assaulted the human spirit. I can imagine that Americans are not the only ones feeling this way, but we sure managed to eviscerate what could have been a national spiritual awakening in the face of adversity. Well over 350,000 Americans have paid with their lives for our national failure, with many more to come.

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      But one thing haunts me more than anything else. It is the reality that there are children in America and elsewhere who do not have enough food to sustain their health and allow them to dream and thrive. I always had enough food to eat when I was a child, sometimes way too much. My son always had enough food too, and he eats a lot. Yet somehow, I have always hoped that you didn’t have to suffer hunger to care a lot about those who are hungry. But here I am, amidst so many still with so much, angry as hell that there can be a projected 18 million children going hungry here and now in America.

      If you are not hungry and your children are not hungry, then you should have the energy to be angry with me about those who are hungry and angry enough to demand that your government do something about this and angry enough to pay more taxes so that it can. Food banks, food charities and individuals buying an extra bag of groceries for someone who is hungry are both part of the problem and part of the solution. But it can only be part of the solution if we do not allow ourselves to be pulled away by our charity from the image of a hungry child.

      So many have said so often (it was an Obama favorite) that “We are better than this.” I hope that we have proven to ourselves — and I know that we have proven to others — that we simply are not better than this. Americans are what they have proven to be. Hungry children in our midst are the easiest barometer of our collective immorality.

      There is much more going on, of course. The unmasked continue to roam our public spaces, food lines and queues for COVID-19 tests continue to grow, health care is being rationed even to those with supposed access to it, systemic racism has not taken a vacation, and our “democratic” institutions are crumbling while the repair crew may not be up to the rebuilding task. For others, there may be even more. This just passed year of assault on the human spirit is likely to continue well into the new year.

      End of This Tunnel

      I know about the vaccines — and we will get to that — and the tunnel that the vaccines are supposed to be the light at the end of. Before that, it is worth noting that the impending Biden presidency and some of his cabinet selections promise a return to some measure of competent governance and the ethics and empathy required to accomplish it. For sure, there will be time to debate specific policies and programs and to sound the alarm if the forgotten remain forgotten in a rush to return to “normal.”

      And we can hope that Joe Biden and his team see the clear need for public accountability for those in the Trump administration, foremost Donald Trump himself, whose corruption and mendacity poisoned our nation and paved the way for disease and death to overwhelm us. There can be no pardoning this if the nation is to move forward.

      Then, before celebrating the light, there will be the challenges posed by the vaccines. First, there will be the simple medical questions with complicated answers: Do the vaccines provide immunity and for how long? Do they prevent the transmission of disease to others? Are they safe? Next up will be the logistical challenges: How do you get enough vaccines from manufacture through delivery to inoculate 330 million people? Most importantly, assuming that the vaccines are effective and safe, and assuming that the logistical challenges are met, who will get which vaccine and when?

      The answers to the safety and efficacy questions likely will emerge in the coming months from scientists given a new lease on integrity by the Biden administration. Meeting the logistical challenges will have to await a national plan that overrides the already-emerging chaos of the present 50-state solution. But the most complex challenge and the one that America has failed time and again is the equity challenge — who will get which vaccine and when.

      Embed from Getty Images

      I have no hope at this moment, after so many failed moments in just the past year, that large swaths of Americans will wake up one morning and start thinking about something beyond themselves. It is most likely our individual selfishness that both propelled Donald Trump to the presidency and gave him a compelling voice that gave so many Americans the space to stand idly by and watch so much suffering of others in their midst. To the unmasked and their ilk, I say screw you. To those who have tried, I say keep trying and keep your distance from those who aren’t.

      Then, when the vaccines come, don’t stand idly by this time, as the selfish find a way to jump the line. To those who every day have provided essential services at great personal risk, you are going to have to fight for those vaccines in this America. If you don’t, your luck will run out and the unmasked will be laughing at you as they party on.

      I am not sure where America is in its dark tunnel nor even the full measure of that tunnel. I am sure that way too many Americans are unwilling to sacrifice much of anything for the well-being of others. There eventually will be a light at the end of this tunnel, but what of the next one?

      *[This article was cross-posted on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Can America Come Together to Fulfil Its Failed Promise?

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      With America in the grips of a ravaging pandemic, a corrupt loser narcissist still at the helm and unmasked “freedom” fighters meandering among us, there is so much to do and so much opposition to doing it. It remains utterly inexplicable how uncoordinated and erratic the national response continues to be to the spectacle of …
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      Can America Confront Its Deadly Failure?

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      Just when you thought you might breathe a sigh of relief in America with the victorious Biden administration on its way, it turns out that over 73 million people voted for Trump, the loser. That is truly difficult to comprehend for most of us who did not.

      Worse yet, since the national response to the coronavirus pandemic was clearly on the ballot, you have to assume that most of those “enlightened” souls were impressed enough with Trump’s pandemic response that they continued to support him. And despite overwhelming evidence that COVID-19 was exponentially rampaging through the populace as the election approached and that well over 200,000 Americans were already dead on his watch, they voted for him anyway.

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      Now, Trump is splitting time between a post-election bunker and the golf course, refusing to do anything to advance a national plan to confront the coronavirus, while continuing to support the coronavirus denial narrative. That leaves those 73 million souls in a quandary — wear a mask or give up all of your freedoms. What to do?

      Too Little, Too Late?

      An initial national plan to move forward has been repeatedly articulated — a mask mandate, enforced social distancing in public places, readily available testing and contact tracing, and consistent messaging from public officials and the scientific community about personal hygiene and the dangers of indoor gatherings of any kind. Starting there and starting now is critical, particularly with the news that there may be a vaccine on the horizon. While this is good news for sure, it cannot be allowed to provide yet another excuse for the nation to avoid the inconvenience of collectively trying very hard to save some lives and protect so many others from tragic outcomes.

      However, the potential for future vaccination of the populace is so fraught with serious logistical and public health challenges that not even the most optimistic vaccine purveyors believe that vaccination will happen in large numbers before the spring. That leaves almost 60 days until the Biden inauguration and four months before spring arrives. At the current rate of over 150,000 new coronavirus cases a day, that is over 9 million new cases by Inauguration Day and more than double that to the first day of spring. The COVID-19 death numbers are equally staggering at a present rate of over 1,500 humans a day.

      There has been and continues to be so much wrong with the US response to the pandemic and the resulting casualties that it is hard to know where to start. But to be clear, Trump and his acolytes are now standing in the way of the development and implementation of any cohesive national plan, only adding to the blood on their hands from the daily death count. As a nation, we were ready to go to war, raise the flag and trumpet our national might when 3,000 of our own were killed by terrorists on 9/11. Now, 73 million Americans seem content to sit on their “patriotic” hands while that number are dying preventable deaths every two days and counting.

      Embed from Getty Images

      To illustrate how we got here, it was not so long ago that the governor of South Dakota, a full-throated cheerleader for the coronavirus denier crowd, welcomed Trump and thousands of guests to a big old July 4th rally at Mount Rushmore. Freedom was everywhere, in every unmasked smile and virus spewing cheer. No need for social distancing, it was all one big Trump-crazed family taking one for the unmasked emperor.

      And then to follow up and reinforce the messaging, how about a huge motorcycle rally in the midst of a pandemic? Another good idea from the governor of South Dakota — bring tens of thousands of drunken and drugged Trump biker “patriots” from all over America in August to celebrate this great country of ours in a place called Sturgis, population 7,000. Well, as of today, the COVID-19 test positivity rate in the great state of South Dakota is just under 50%, and there is still no mask mandate from the governor.

      By looking back just a little and trying to comprehend the present, it should be clear that President-elect Joe Biden has quite a challenge ahead of him. Planning can begin now, but a national plan cannot begin to be implemented until Trump gets out of the way.

      Since Trump and his acolytes are unable to accept being losers, let’s tag them as killers and see if we can get their attention. Now, even more than before, that is surely what they are. They are killing people in America who don’t have to die. While this may not be the time for legal niceties, “negligent homicide” seems to fit the bill. And it is surely time to make it part of the conversation.

      COVID-19 and the Holiday Season

      I am certain as I write this that the number of coronavirus deaths will soar in the days and weeks ahead. This is not a medical conclusion. Rather it is the only conclusion that reason suggests as we watch millions of Americans gather together for the holidays believing that “they” are immune from tragedy, kind of like people who text and drive and keep loaded guns in easy reach of the children they say they love. But more than that, it will be the price that the nation pays for its flailing and failing collective morality.

      As freedom rings and holiday bells jingle, as choirs sing and families gather around a tree sharing good cheer, this will also be the season for many to visit hospitals and funeral homes trying to figure out how it is possible that daddy is dead. Well, let me tell you, daddy is dead because a nation with the resources to keep daddy alive and well collectively failed to do so.

      It is also because of a failure of national leadership that has no historic precedent. Let me repeat this: Trump and his acolytes have blood on their hands. Those who support his continued refusal to cede authority immediately to the incoming Biden administration for implementation of a national pandemic response should check their hands as well.

      Yes, I am a Trump hater, and I will cheer the day that he is held accountable for his crimes.

      *[This article was co-published on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      America’s Moment of National Reckoning

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      America has just concluded a cataclysmic Election Day and its immediate aftermath. What was supposed to be our quadrennial celebration of democratic institutions is instead a reflection of what happens when unprincipled and corrupt leaders are given access to the national stage to promote disorder, distrust and chaos. It seems likely that the outcome of the vote will be finalized in the days ahead and that Joe Biden will have won the election. But until Trump is chained in his White House bunker without public access, the peaceful transfer of power remains at risk.

      Add to the equation that there is a deep sense among progressive activists, people of color, the underprivileged and the under-represented that over 71.5 million votes for Trump was a direct repudiation of their demands for a dynamic push forward for social, economic and racial justice in America. And this doesn’t even get to the immediacy of confronting a rampaging pandemic at home and an abundance of global challenges.

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      Amid the chaos, let me be clear that I hope an armed confrontation can be avoided and that there will be enough leadership and institutional integrity to force an orderly transfer of power. However, the election results make clear that many more people voted for Trump this time than last time. Targeted right-wing messaging works, and there is no apparent antidote. Those 71.5 million votes for Trump are a terrible outcome for a nation at war with itself and in which only the right-wingers have the guns.

      As Biden’s victory sets in, there will be those who cheered on Trump and his toxic message who will not rest until they try to blow something up along with the country itself. As that unfolds, there is likely to be the first foundational test of America’s political and military institutions since the Civil War. I am not sure those institutions will hold. It is certainly not clear that those institutions can ensure a peaceful transfer of power.

      Healing the Nation

      At some point, something will have to give. At that point, a crippled America will harvest the rancid fruit of decades of delusion about how “exceptional” the nation was as it grew intellectually lazy, willed its future to greedy and corrupt capitalists, and utterly failed to invest in a sustainable system of governance that could meet the challenges of an evolving world. Picking up the pieces will not be easy.

      The 50-state solution so beloved by those wallowing in the 19th century simply must be discarded, and some new foundation for national governance must be designed and implemented. Unfortunately, with the coronavirus pandemic ripping its way through the populace and a court system packed with those 19th-century wannabes, the time for wishful thinking will have to wait. The 50-state solution will have to be urgently junked to address the pandemic with a national plan and national mandates. Maybe afterward, America can study the results of the coordinated national response and find the way to a new, vibrant, 21st-century federal system.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Meanwhile, there will be an enormous amount of focus on how America got to this point, but I want to get out front that years of “false equivalency” disguised as “balance” or “fairness” has poisoned the nation’s well of fact-based knowledge from which any democratic nation would hope that its citizens could draw. Much has been said about willful ignorance, but not enough about the fountains of falsehoods that feed those unwilling to learn much of anything that requires factual focus. Repetition of belief is no substitute for acquisition of knowledge.

      The impending national convulsion has just begun. A reckoning with collective ignorance and the arrogance of ignorance is essential as the starting point for a meaningful national dialog about how America so completely lost its way. The responsible mainstream media and social media outlets have to stop honoring falsehood with repetition and that most ludicrous of questions — “What’s your response?” And to try to rebuild lost credibility, real and transparent sourcing of news reporting has to again become the rule.

      Then, if government institutions are to be resurrected and strengthened, there must be some measure of accountability for those who worked so diligently to undermine governance, often to enhance their own wealth and power. Today’s list of the corrupt is really long. Trump is a sick symptom, a tool used by so many others to achieve corrupt ends. But he is also symbolic of so much of what is so wrong that his accountability is an essential component of any national reckoning.

      It is important that Trump be charged with the crimes he has committed both in office and in his corrupt life that led to his election in the first place in 2016. It is equally important that those in his inner circle, including his family, his enabling aides, his attorney general and his secretary of state, all find themselves under criminal investigative scrutiny.

      This will surely further divide the nation. But it will be impossible to begin the healing if there is no accountability for the intentional wrongdoing that has led to so much suffering and dysfunction. Those who corruptly profited from the past should have to pay in the present if there is to be a future with the rule of law restored to its proper place in the national pantheon of virtues.

      Joe Biden’s Inauguration

      However, the critical first task ahead is to ensure Biden’s inauguration on January 20, 2021. Unfortunately, that date is over 10 weeks away. Ten weeks of an angry and “victimized” Trump still empowered to “govern” will bleed so much more blood from the nation. He will have to be thwarted at every turn each and every day, so the hard work of restoration can begin now.

      This must start with a national plan to confront the coronavirus pandemic that is raging across America and much of the globe. This cannot wait 10 more weeks. There is no need for a “balanced” discussion because we have no choice. We have seen how a venal leader can lead so many to their demise and so many more to a participatory march to more death and disease.

      Biden must try hard to convince those participatory marchers to turn around, look at those they care about and start protecting themselves and others. This will be a hard sell, and those of us who have already seen this light will have to step up our game as well. It is no longer fine for corporate sloths and all those endangered small businesses to wink at their “no mask, no entry” signs. It is time for local governments to publicly out those businesses that do not enforce mask mandates and social distancing in their community and publicly support those that do.

      I am hardly certain where any of this will end. But I am certain that the false narrative of a caring, giving and committed people has now finally been ripped from our delusional midst. America is not now, nor has it often been, much of anything to be proud of.

      *[This article was co-published on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More