Political Notebook – Republicans’ last chance

It’s February now, and as New Zealand begins to move from summer holiday mode back toward normality, I will, too. That means it’s as good a time as any to begin more normal blogging, too. Maybe I’ll even do more of these Political Notebook posts this year. We’ll see—no promises, of course, but it’d be easy to beat last year, when I did only one post.

At the moment, the USA is still adjusting to saner, more rational politics, now that the loser of the 2020 presidential election is finally gone (Related: Roger Green's post, "January 6 to competence"). Naturally, it can’t and won’t be as easy as simply “going back to normal”, not with so much lunacy afoot and so many radicalised, violent, conspiracy theory-loving extremists on the loose in the USA, determined to wreak havoc—and control the Republican Party. Still, it doesn’t have to be that way.

The Republican Party: Do or die?

The Republican Party has one last chance to save itself: Convict the ex-occupant of the White House in the upcoming impeachment trial because he incited the US Capitol riot. If they refuse, despite so many of their lot calling him a danger only a few short weeks ago, then it could be all over for the party. As Republican strategist Sarah Longwell warned, if they don’t convict the ex-occupant of the White House, he’s “going to control [the Republican Party] for the next 10 years.”

It’s likely that even if the losing candidate fades away for whatever reason, there will be plenty of others to take up the cause, such as it is. The Republican leader in the US House boarded a flight to the 2020 loser’s Florida house to kiss his, um, ring. As Steve Benen of MSNBC noted, “GOP leaders would have us believe that they're not necessarily kowtowing to their corrupt former leader; they're merely using him to acquire power.” Sure they are.

The Republican Party has made such “deals with the devil” repeatedly over the past 40 years, and it’s always been a disaster. Reagan brought far-right “Christians” into his coalition, and now they dictate much of the party’s policy and have ultimate say in who is, and who is not, appointed to the federal judiciary by a Republican president. In 2010, the party leaders thought they could control and exploit the teabaggers, but it turned out they couldn’t (funny to think we used to think they were the nuttiest Republicans around). Then, in 2016, when that former reality TV series performer decided to run for the party’s presidential nomination, they decided they could control him, too. In a way, they did, since they could do whatever they wanted, like appointing extremists to Federal courts, but what they couldn’t control was the frothing mob that supported their party’s Dear Leader.

That mob is still there and still dangerous. Just today, “Dodger Stadium’s COVID-19 vaccination site temporarily shut down after protesters gather at entrance”. Everyone knows that more violence is inevitable, and the more we learn about their storming of the US Capitol, the more we can see how very, very, very lucky it was that Members of Congress weren’t murdered. Next time, the seditionists be better organised for whatever violence they choose to unleash.

Insanity seems to be the main problem with what now appears to be the Republican base. Before the blockade of Dodger Stadium, organisers went online inviting people going to what they called their “Scamdemic Protest/March”, and urged them to “please refrain from wearing Trump/MAGA attire as we want our statement to resonate with the sheeple. No flags but informational signs only. This is a sharing information protest and march against everything COVID, Vaccine, PCR Tests, Lockdowns, Masks, Fauci, Gates, Newsom, China, digital tracking, etc. [Emphasis added]. This means that they’re learning from the huge mistakes in the attempted Capitol Hill coup and are already fine-tuning their tactics.

The modern Republican Party, then, has become the party of bizarre conspiracy theories, “alternative facts”, lies, intimidation, white grievance, and utter insane nuttiness. “Jewish space lasers,” anyone? How about their bizarre and utterly insane belief that Hillary Clinton cut off the face of a young girl, wore it as a mask, and then drank her blood? Then there are the oldies-but-goodies, like the non-existent basement in a pizza parlour where imaginary children being sexually trafficked by imaginary people were supposedly held captive in imaginary cages, or even the shapeshifting reptilian aliens who supposedly control everything (oh, how we used to laugh at that one…).

And then there are their ongoing lies about the Sandy Hook school shooting and also about the shooting six years later at Parkland, Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, or maybe Seth Rich’s murder, who, exactly, was behind the insurrection on Capitol Hill, the “stolen” election, and on, and on, and on—all lies and insanity they seem to actually believe.

None of that, nor the fact that the Republican Party’s leadership condones such dangerous insanity, is funny any more. Those people are armed and dangerous—and are now at the very heart of the Republican Party: “A guide to likely member of Congress Marjorie Taylor Greene’s conspiracy theories and toxic rhetoric”, or “Marjorie Taylor Greene's record of radicalism gets even worse”, or the stunt pulled when “Rep. Boebert causes delay at U.S. House security, refuses to turn over her bag”. These are mere samples of the future of the Republican Party. Clearly good times are ahead…

The leadership of the Republican Party needs to take responsibility for the monster they unleashed, aided, abetted, and encouraged. They need to fix this. The best place to start would be to convict the loser of the 2020 presidential election, and then strip him of the ability to ever run for office again. If they don’t, the insanity of the Republican Party’s base will become the only acceptable way to be a Republican, and the USA will only have one functioning, sane, rational, fact-based political party—and even then it will struggle to gain power. That’s the future the Republicans plan to give the USA this month.

In crisis, there is hope

There are things that could help fix this situation. Most of the reforms that are critically needed are also impossible, or nearly so. One of the things that will help is if the Senate abolishes the filibuster, but, yeah, that’s sooooo going to happen, right?

Failing that, there are more things in the mix. For example, “DC statehood bill introduced in Senate”. No one expects that to go anywhere, but statehood for DC and, if they want it, Puerto Rico, would add more Democratic US Representatives to help reduce the effect of the gerrymandering used to rig elections for the Republicans. If both of them became states, it would also add four Democratic US Senators, and that matters because of how anti-democratic the US Senate is (a better solution overall would be a proportional Senate, with the Senate apportioned like the US House is, though in my opinion abolishing it altogether shouldn’t be off the table).

There’s also hope in that some Republicans do seem to get it. Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska wrote a timely opinion piece for The Atlantic, “QAnon Is Destroying the GOP From Within”. US Rep Adam Kinsinger of my native Illinois is another. He was one of a mere 10 Republican US Representatives voted to impeach the loser of the 2020 election after he incited the seditious attempted coup at Capitol Hill (see also “Betraying Your Church—And Your Party”, also in The Atlantic). Just today, it was announced that, as the Washington Post put it, he “has launched a new political action committee that is designed to become a financial engine to challenge the former president’s wing of the GOP caucus and stand up against a leadership team still aligned with him.” I wish him luck with that—sincerely—but the survival of the republic requires more than those efforts. In the meantime, plenty of Republicans are voting with their feet and walking away from the party, including many with lifetime of service to the party.

The forces of darkness are strong, and the Republican Party is on a knife’s edge. If it survives, it will come down to what Republicans do later this month. A fallback is if a few rational Republicans left succeed in re-capturiing their party. And maybe substantive reforms will actually be made. And, if all that fails? No idea. But the resultt can’t be good.

I watched this year—for Nigel

After I moved to New Zealand, I didn’t always watch the live coverage of the inauguration of a new president. I watched it in 2008, and for much the same reason I did this time: To make sure the new president replaced the one I couldn’t stand (though, ironically, I was thinking today how much better Bush 2 seems than he did back then, but that’s all on the guy who lost the 2020 presidential election, who has already been labelled, correctly, “the worst-ever US President”).

I didn’t watch it any year before that, or in 2012, for a simple reason: The swearing-in takes place at 6am New Zealand time, and the festivities earlier than that. That’s the real reason I didn’t watch in 2017, as I said at the time, and not because of who it was, much as I detested him.

All of which means that it’s more common for me to not watch. This year I had a particular reason for not watching: Worry. After the terrorists’ attempted coup last week, I was worried that they’d attack President Biden or the Inauguration Ceremonies, and I felt I simply couldn’t bear seeing that on live TV.

But, I did watch. And the main reason for that was to honour Nigel.

As I’ve said before, one the things Nigel said to me after he was diagnosed in September last year was, “I just hope I live long enough to see that bastard voted out of the White House.” Things didn’t work out that way, of course.

So, I felt a special duty to try and make him proud. I dedicated my vote to him, and when I woke up this morning around 5:15, debating whether I should get up and watch, I remembered watching the 2008 Inauguration with him, and I immediately knew that if he was alive he’d be up and watching “to see that bastard… out of the White House”. He would have let out a cheer.

I got up and watched the event live (via ABC News livestream on YouTube; I tried to watch it on NZ programmes, but found them, TV3 in particular, insufferable). I held my breath at a few times when I felt President Biden was at risk (especially walking down Pennsylvania Ave as he headed to the White House). The fact that the guy who lost the election last November acted like a spoiled brat and left Washington early made the swearing-in a little less dramatic—and exciting—than it would have been otherwise, but it nevertheless meant the end to the darkest period in American political history in my lifetime was finally over. I know that Nigel would’ve been beaming from ear to ear, and I certainly was, pretty much on behalf of us both.

In the end, I was glad I didn’t have to see anything of the loser as he left Washington. It would have been as annoying, and even angering, as any other time I’d had the misfortune to see or hear him speak (to this day I’ve never heard, watched, or read the campaign speech the loser gave in 2017). His absence made the day an even happier one.

Despite my reservations about doing it, I got up (very) early and watched the Inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. I’m glad I did.

This one was for you, Nigel. Just don’t expect me to do that for you every four years.

President Biden’s Inaugural Speech can be read at the White House website.

Ask Arthur 2020, Part 3: Important and not

Today’s questions are serious/important and, to lighten things a bit, one that’s, well, not. At least, not to me. I suppose some might see tings the other way round.

Be that as it may, today’s first question is from longtime friend Sherry, who I’ve known for—well, a very long time:

I have always loved your take on American Politics.

I want to think my Trump supporting friends and family only supported him because they are Republican, or Anti-abortion. Not because they are like him, because I think character makes the man. And I believe in my heart, Trump is the worst human to ever sit in our White House. I pray my loved ones are not condoning his behavior.

I believe his lies alone have set our country in a terrible direction, because his in-your-face behavior says "it's okay," to be like me.

With you having come from a family where your father was a Pastor, do you feel Trump's character will forever change America? That 4 years of this man's behavior has brought out the worst in America? That it's okay to dehumanize women, hate Muslims, create division, encouraged violence, dismiss science, openly lie, ignore laws designed to protect a country from nepotism, benefiting financially from your position.

I'm afraid his influence on our morality is almost worse than his policies and political fallout. If so, how do we fix it?

I’m glad you like my take on politics, especially because I’ve been giving US politics little blogging attention for awhile now. There’s no doubt that the USA has been launched in a terrible direction, and the questions you raise are important ones.

First, his supporters. I think it’s important to separate 2016 and 2020 because the first lot may or may not have known what he was really like, but many didn’t care because they just wanted to “burn it all down” after decades of being ignored by the political establishment. Naturally, I think they chose the wrong solution to very real problems, but that’s mainly about ideological as well as tactical disagreements.

However, there were significant numbers of his supporters in 2016 who did, indeed, think he was just fine to be president, despite being an awful human being. In 2016, such people were very often anti-immigrant, racist, misogynistic, anti-LGBTQ, etc., but in 2020 the proportion was clearly higher.

In 2018, just a month out from the Midterm Elections, The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer wrote “The Cruelty Is the Point”. He said:

Taking joy in that suffering is more human than most would like to admit. Somewhere on the wide spectrum between adolescent teasing and the smiling white men in the lynching photographs are the Trump supporters whose community is built by rejoicing in the anguish of those they see as unlike them, who have found in their shared cruelty an answer to the loneliness and atomization of modern life.

I think the important point there is that the cruelty and hatred unleashed by the soon to be ex-occupant of the White House merely tapped into existing prejudices and hatred. In other words, he didn’t create the moral collapse in the USA, he mostly just exploited it.

Prior to 2016, it was (mostly) socially unacceptable to say racist things out loud and in public. Once racist and xenophobic and similarly bigoted Tweets and campaign rally taunts became common, everyday things, it opened the floodgates for people to express what they were already thinking and feeling. Because of that, I agree with you that “his influence on our morality is almost worse than his policies and political fallout,” but that leads to another question you asked, whether his character “will forever change America”.

The hard, cold reality is that after four years of the current regime, half of the USA quite literally hates the other half. It’s more than mere ideology, it’s basically tribal, especially for Republicans (though Democrats have been drawn in, too). How do we put the genie back in the bottle? After all, while 80 million people voted to make Joe Biden the next president, some 74 million decided that an incompetent, ignorant, lying narcissist with psychopathic tendencies was exactly who they wanted in the White House. Moreover, Democrats actually lost seats in the US House and in state legislatures, and failed to take control of the US Senate (on the night, anyway; we’ll know for sure early in 2021).

The solution to Making America Moral Again is far more than just electoral politics. Earlier this month, FiveThirtyEight published a piece, “Why The Suburbs Have Shifted Blue”, which talks about opportunities as well as cautions for Democrats in continuing to win what had been strongly Republican areas. While demographics in the suburbs are clearly trending toward Democrats, it could take some time for an actual shift to happen. The article quotes Ashley Jardina, a political science professor at Duke University:

“The big question mark for me is what happens in these suburban areas in two years or four years if [Republican candidates] adopt a similar strategy to Trump but with more competence and decorum?”

In my opinion, the real danger is not the current guy, it’s what happens if a smart, savvy person with the exact same immorality and amorality becomes the Republican standard bearer? The inept and ignorant current Republican leader managed to show how easy it would be for someone smarter and more capable to completely dismantle US democracy and establish an authoritarian dictatorship. Add to that the Republicans rigging the system to keep themselves in power, especially in Congress and the state legislatures despite being a minority of all US voters, and it raises huge warning flags that go far beyond the current guy.

Which doesn’t mean there’s no hope. If Democrats win control of the US Senate, they could move quickly to enact reforms to make it much harder for future wannabe dictators to damage the country. But the biggest of the necessary reforms—abolishing the Electoral College, reforming the US Senate by making it proportional like the US House (or even abolishing it), ensuring every citizen can vote—are all beyond the power of Congress, and would require Republican-controlled state legislatures to ratify Constitutional Amendments. As the saying goes, that would be like turkeys voting for an early Christmas—suicide, in other words.

No, I don’t think his character “will forever change America”, because he merely unleashed what was already there. Whether things can be fixed or not will be the big question, and it will depend on 74 million Americans being able to admit they were wrong, to learn from the experience, and to grow. Right now, we cannot know whether any of that is even possible, let alone whether it will happen.

Today’s second question is from Roger Green, who asks:

What products or services from the US – which you believe still exist – do you miss now that you're in New Zealand?

The short answer is nothing. Much of what I might miss (like Chicago’s Marshall Field’s) I know is gone. I’ve long forgotten what other products or services I used to buy because I've been here for 25 years now.

Still, there are a few. I miss Fruit of the Loom underwear, so much so that I’ve ordered it from the USA. I also miss clothes shopping at places like Target where I could get good quality inexpensive shirts (and that underwear…). In New Zealand, I’ve found shirts that are inexpensive or good quality, but not often both. Books and technology products (like from Apple) are also dramatically cheaper in the USA, however, I can get those here and do, so it’s just the cheap prices I miss.

There’s also food. American-style pizza and Mexican food isn’t easy to find, though most American fast food is available here. Apart from that, some food items (like kosher dill pickles) either aren’t available here or are very expensive.

So, after living in New Zealand for 25 years, there really aren’t that many products or services from the USA that I miss. I’ve either adapted, found ones here I like better, or, probably most common of all, I’ve simply forgotten about the old ones. All of which is for the best.

Thanks for the questions, Sherry and Roger! There’s still one more post in this series, which I’ll publish before the year is out. Of course.

All posts in this series are tagged “AAA-20”. All previous posts from every “Ask Arthur” series are tagged, appropriately enough, ”Ask Arthur”.

Previously:

Sure, why not ask again? – The first post in this year’s series.
Ask Arthur 2020, Part 1: An untold story
Ask Arthur 2020, Part 2: Same as it never was

Ask Arthur 2020, Part 2: Same as it never was

Over the years, I’ve been asked a lot of questions about all sorts of things—politics, religion, even my own philosophies, among many other things. Today’s question is no different.

Today’s question is from Roger Green:

This is actually a question that came up in a Bible study this morning. The assumption is that people want to get back to the way they were before COVID (and George Floyd and 2020 generally).

What processes are most likely NOT to go back to what had been the norm? And related, how do you think people have changed by 2020? Kinder, greedier, more or less tolerant?

I think the answer to that is really, “depends on where you’re talking about,” because, as with fighting the pandemic itself, everything depends on where one lives. For that matter, the problems of the year that seemed the biggest also depended on where one lives.

First, the pandemic. I think there will be some lasting changes in all developed countries. Chief among them, there will be more people working from home, at least part of the time, but probably more than that. It will mean more corporations downsizing their real estate, which, in turn, could mean large vacant office buildings in major cities. Because of that, the hospitality trade in business areas will suffer dramatically, which will mean going out for lunch or after-work drinks workmates may become less common.

People will desperately want to get back to what they had, so I expect there will be problems with compliance with things like physical distancing and wearing masks. I say that in part because I’ve seen a notable drop in people using New Zealand’s Covid Tracer App. Obviously my personal observations aren’t evidence, but they at least suggests that some people in New Zealand have already become complacent—the very reason the government launched its “Make Summer Unstoppable” campaign.

While everyone want to get back to “normal”, we have no way of knowing if that will even be possible. We don’t know if people are infectious after getting the vaccine, or how long their protection lasts, so we can’t be sure it’ll ever be safe to go back to what we had before. The only way to make that more likely is for people to get vaccinated and to continue wearing masks and physically distance until we have better answers about immunity for, and transmission by, vaccinated people.

A huge amount of kindness shown during the worst of the pandemic, most of it unheralded. In New Zealand, kindness was a cornerstone of the government’s response because they needed us to do our part, not just to get through lockdown, but also to help ensure that others did, too. It worked. However, I’m not convinced that kindness is a natural state for humans in normal times, so I think that most of us will probably go back to being cantankerous and unforgiving when the crisis does eventually end. I hope I’m wrong about that.

In the USA, much of the turmoil and stress was stuff caused—usually directly, sometimes indirectly—by the soon to be ex-occupant of the White House and his disastrous mishandling of the pandemic. Having a real president and vice president in office, pursuing perfectly rational policies and upholding the rule of law will go a long way toward turning down the flame under the societal pot. I certainly don’t expect any of the issues—like Black Lives Matter, for example—to be solved in the next four years, however, we at least know that none of them will get worse like they did in the previous four. That alone should allow a bit of a return to “normal” for society generally—the caveat being that patience is not infinite, and the new administration will need to take action to make things better because simply not making them worse is no progress at all, not really.

Similarly, the new US administration will need to act on climate change, which even with action will continue to disrupt societies with more (and more frequent) severe storms and wider, more destructive events like wildfires. But there can be other natural events, like the eruption of New Zealand’s Whakaari/White Island, something that happened only a year ago, in December 2019, mere weeks before Covid emerged. All of those sorts of things—weather related and non weather related events—are by definition unpredictable. We can only hope that things will be better in 2021 than they were this year, and if they are, that, too, will help restore a sense of normality.

People throughout the developed world have been changed by 2020, and some of that may be permanent or, at least, long-lived. The deep and bitter political division in the USA, for example, won’t vanish any time soon (it built up over decades, after all), but it might get better if nature doesn’t get too dramatic and political progress is made.

As a sign of hope, I offer New Zealand: Faced with many of the same challenges as the USA—the global pandemic, systemic racism, a large income divide and poverty, etc., New Zealand voters saw they had a strong, capable, competent government that was trying to unite, not divide, the country and they re-elected their government in an historic landslide. That’s what good government can result in. So, if the new administration gets the pandemic under control, if it makes progress on finally dealing with simmering unresolved social and political issues, there is hope for a return to more normal times.

All of which puts aside questions about “what ‘normal’ are people expecting to return to”. What people perceive as “normal” isn’t necessarily desirable, and it may not even be real. I’m thinking especially of the folks who are convinced that there were no racial problems until “troublemakers” started rioting. And there are still people who believe the fantasy version of 1950s America is something to aspire to. None of those viewpoints are based on reality, and if that’s what the “normal” people want, they will be hugely disappointed.

Thanks to Roger for today’s question, my rather in adequate answer notwithstanding.

It’s not too late to ask a question: Simply leave a comment on this post (anonymous comments are allowed). Or, you can email me your question (and you can even tell me to keep your name secret, although, why not pick a nom de question?). You can also ask questions on the AmeriNZ Facebook page, though keep in mind that all Facebook Pages are public, just like this blog. You can also send me a private message through the AmeriNZ Facebook Page.

All posts in this series are tagged “AAA-20”. All previous posts from every “Ask Arthur” series are tagged, appropriately enough, ”Ask Arthur”.

Previously:

Sure, why not ask again? – The first post in this year’s series.
Ask Arthur 2020, Part 1: An untold story

Worth Quoting: Pete Buttigieg

The video above is of the announcement of the nomination of Pete Buttigieg to be Secretary of Transportation. Here’s an approximate transcript of Pete’s remarks:

Mr. President-elect, Madam Vice President-elect, thank you so much for entrusting me with this opportunity to serve the American people. I am humbled by your confidence, and eager to do everything in my power to ensure that this administration succeeds.

My hometown of South Bend, Indiana, was built by the power of American transportation: from trade along the river whose bend gives our city its name, to the rail lines that connected us to the rest of the country back when we were considered the West, to the livelihoods created by good-paying union jobs at places like the aeronautical supplier Bendix and the giant auto assembly of Studebaker. And now, climate and infrastructure innovation have helped bring my community into the 21st century.

I’ve also had a personal love of transportation ever since childhood. More than once, as a college student, I would convince a friend to travel nearly a thousand miles back to Indiana with me on Amtrak, though I know that in this administration, I will at best be the second biggest train enthusiast around. I spent a spring break in graduate school studying on board a cargo ship. Travel in my mind is synonymous with adventure, growth, and, even love, so much so that I proposed to my husband, Chasten, in an airport terminal. Don’t let anybody tell you O’Hare isn’t romantic.

And let me take this chance to thank Chasten for everything that he gives, everything he sacrifices, to support me in pursuing public service.

The first time I ran for office was on a platform of supporting the Obama-Biden administration’s rescue of the auto industry. And when I did first take office as mayor of a city fighting its way out of the teeth of the Great Recession, infrastructure was at the heart of our vision.

We reimagined how vehicles and people moved through the city, unlocking new economic vibrancy in our urban core. We built up partnerships, from a regional collaboration to improve rail service to the public-private partnership that put our city at the cutting edge of bicycle mobility. We developed new forms of support for lower-wage workers in their commutes, and added electric vehicle charging infrastructure to help prepare a more sustainable future.

I also dealt with the challenges created by generations of often inadequate state and federal infrastructure funding. With just enough resources to repave every lane-mile of street only every one hundred years or so, I faced a constant battle with that natural enemy of every mayor: potholes. In a community where more than a quarter of our residents lived in poverty, we worked to fill in the gaps that were created when underfunded transit resources left too many cut off from opportunity, just because they didn’t have the means to own a car.

At its best, transportation makes the American Dream possible: Getting people and goods to where they need to be, directly and indirectly creating good-paying jobs. At its worst, misguided policies and missed opportunities can reinforce racial, economic, and environmental injustice, dividing or isolating neighborhoods, undermining government’s basic role of empowering everyone to thrive.

And now an historic opportunity. This administration can deliver policy and resources in that can create jobs, rise to the climate challenge, and equitably serve all Americans, all while continuing to ensure the safety of travellers and workers alike. America has given this Administration a mandate to build back better—and step one in building back better, literally, is to build.

Americans shouldn’t settle for less than our peers in the developed world when it comes to our roads and bridges, our railways and transit systems. The U.S. should lead the way—and I know that in this administration, we will. We’ll bring together leaders and communities from every corner—labor and business, left, right and center, urban and rural, communities of color, tribal nations, mayors, counties, and states, everyone who has a stake in American infrastructure—to design a better future. Americans expect us to see to it that the idea of an “infrastructure week” is associated with results, and never again let it be a media punch line.

My view of this opportunity is also shaped by being the youngest member so far named to this cabinet, and the first Millennial to be at that table. Newer generations have a lot at stake in infrastructure policy that, that by its nature, must contemplate both the immediate and the long-term. The question of how America will look by the middle of this century—the competitiveness of our economy, the security of our climate—for me this is not academic, it’s personal.

I am also mindful of that the eyes of history on this appointment—knowing this is the first time an American president has ever sent an openly LGBTQ cabinet member to the Senate for confirmation.

I can remember watching the news, seventeen years old, in Indiana, and seeing a story about an appointee of President Clinton, named to be an ambassador, attacked and denied a vote in the Senate because he was gay, ultimately only able to serve only by a recess appointment. At the time, I had no aspirations of being appointed by a president to anything—at that age, I was hoping to be an airline pilot. And I was a long way from coming out, even to myself. But still, I watched that story, I learned something about some of the limits that exist in this country when it comes to who is allowed to belong. But just as important, I saw how those limits could be challenged.

So, two decades later, I can’t help but think of a seventeen-year-old somewhere who might be watching us right now, somebody who wonders whether and where they belong in the world, or even in their own family, and I’m thinking about the message that today’s announcement is sending them.

So thank you, Mr. President-elect, thank you for honouring your commitment to diversity with this administration you’re assembling. And thank you, Madam Vice President-elect, for your trailblazing leadership, your encouragement, and your friendship.

There is no greater source of meaning in professional life than the chance to serve others. I felt that meaning every time I laced up my boots when I was in the military, every day coming to work as mayor. And I feel it here now, joining this historic team, with such an important mission, preparing to deliver for all Americans.

Mayor Pete goes to Washington

Change that moves society forward and that helps to advance fairness and equality never comes in one moment, or one single event. It evolves over time, building on the layers of rock built by those who came before. In that context, the nomination of former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg to be Secretary of Transportation is truly historic precisely because it helps to move society forward.

Mayor Pete was for a time a strong contender for the Democratic nomination for President, but when that path closed off, he sensibly stepped aside. That was after he’d caught people’s attention (including mine) and established a profile that would eventually lead him to be one of the top surrogates for the Biden-Harris campaign (not the least because he was one of the few who’d appear on Fox “News”). Because of all of that, it was always assumed that he’d be nominated to something in the Biden-Harris Administration. Yesterday, President-elect Biden nominated Mayor Pete to be the Secretary of Transportation. I think this was a brilliant move.

First, it continues President-elect Biden’s commitment to diversity in his Cabinet which is shaping up to be the most diverse in American history. Including the first-ever LGBTQ Cabinet nominee was logical, and so was Transportation as the choice: As a former mayor, Pete arguably has more lived experience with the implications of transportation policy than do many members of far-distant Congress. But let’s be honest here: The appointment is far less controversial than if it had been, say, Secretary of State or some other high-profile office.

As the saying goes, “haters gotta hate” and he will be opposed for no other reason than the fact he’s gay, especially by the fundamentalist “christian” base of the Republican Party. Appointing him to Transportation gives cover to some more “moderate” Republicans (all three of them…) whose votes may be needed for confirmation; a high-profile position wouldn’t give them any “cover” for doing the right thing and voting to confirm.

Which may lead some people to assume it’s only about symbolism, perhaps reinforced for them because Pete is only the second nominee so far to get an in-person announcement. But symbolism is damn important, as Pete himself said in his remarks:

I am also mindful of that the eyes of history on this appointment—knowing this is the first time an American president has ever sent an openly LGBTQ cabinet member to the Senate for confirmation.

I can remember watching the news, seventeen years old, in Indiana, and seeing a story about an appointee of President Clinton, named to be an ambassador, attacked and denied a vote in the Senate because he was gay, ultimately only able to serve only by a recess appointment.

At the time, I had no aspirations of being appointed by a president to anything—at that age, I was hoping to be an airline pilot. And I was a long way from coming out, even to myself. But still, I watched that story, I learned something about some of the limits that exist in this country when it comes to who is allowed to belong. But just as important, I saw how those limits could be challenged.

So, two decades later, I can’t help but think of a seventeen-year-old somewhere who might be watching us right now, somebody who wonders whether and where they belong in the world, or even in their own family, and I’m thinking about the message that today’s announcement is sending them.

Pete was referring to James Hormel who was, for a time, the USA’s first openly-gay ambassador, no thanks to the troglodytes in the US Senate. I, too, remember what happened to him, and how it seemed as if the world would never get better for LGBTQ people. That’s why the symbolism of Mayor Pete’s nomination is so important: It helps people see possibilities where once they saw only barriers—and hatred.

Every time a barrier is broken, young people can see new possibilities, like the Black kids who, thanks to President Obama, saw they might become US President one day, too, or little girls who saw with Hillary Clinton that they might be nominated for US President by a major political party. Those same examples also show that with every advance there are forces trying desperately to attack, destroy, and reverse that progress, like the racists who were so incensed that a Black man was elected president (twice) that they helped cause the rise of the soon to be ex-occupant of the White House, or the sexists and misogynists who hated Hillary to the core of their being for no apparent rational reason.

Many of those same people, or other bigots in their place, will hate Mayor Pete, too. But just as Mayor Pete was the first LGBTQ strong contender for the presidential nomination of a major US political party, so, too, he will push things forward as the first LGBTQ member of Cabinet. We’ll have to wait and see if there are the same kinds of desperate attempts to attack and destroy that progress as there was after President Obama and Secretary Clinton (I’m betting there will be). But every step forward is still a step forward and it makes the next one that much easier, because of the opposition as much as in spite of it.

I’m also keenly aware that some on the Left hate Mayor Pete, too, for their own reasons. That’s their business, not mine (I don’t share their views). Still, in my opinion, if the objective is to rebuild the USA in order to move the country forward, then maybe—just maybe—someone the Left and Right both hate may be just the right sort of person.

At the very least, it seems to me, somewhere in the USA some scared, vulnerable 17-year-old won’t care about any of that—not the politics, not the potential for backlash, not whether it doesn’t go far enough or goes too far. All they’ll care about is that someone like them is being nominated to sit at the Cabinet table for the first time in US history, and that matters—a helluva lot.

Change that moves society forward and that helps to advance fairness and equality never comes in one moment, or one single event. The nomination of Pete Buttigieg to be Secretary of Transportation matters precisely because it helps to move society forward.

Graphic source: Biden-Harris Transition Facebook Page.

Political Notebook – Two big elections

Try as I might, I just couldn’t be bothered blogging about the two big elections I recently went through. Naturally, I had stuff to say, but nothing I cared about enough to actually write about. Part of that was was caused by the effects of my prescriptions, but I think I was also just plain worn down, especially by the past 13+ months, but also the three years-ish before that. Still, I noticed stuff, and a Political Notebook post is the simplest way to share some of that.

I really only published one expressly partisan political post just before the US election, and also one about voting in the US election. Apart from that, I haven’t really said anything since before Nigel died. All together, prior to today I published 53 posts about the US elections.

Up until today, I’d published 19 posts about the NZ election, and a large number of them were general in nature. Only a few posts were partisan in focus. I also had one about voting in the New Zealand election.

I think that I’d have had a lot more to say about both countries’ elections if Nigel hadn’t died. I can’t be sure, of course, but at the very least, I’d have been more motivated. Fortunately plenty of other people have written about stuff so I didn’t have to.

The USA’s elections

We all knew that the US election was going to be a mess, no matter what happened. What happened was all that and so much worse. The graphic above demonstrates how wide Joe Biden’s victory margin really was, though, of course, that’s irrelevant: The only thing that matters is getting enough votes in just the right states. Of course, Joe Biden did that, too.

As the result of again losing one single Electoral College Vote in Nebraska to the Democratic Candidate, the state’s Republicans are again determined to make the state “winner takes all” to ensure they all go to the Republican candidate. Of course.

Hypocritical electoral antics are one of the many reasons “The crisis isn’t Trump. It’s the Republican Party.” As Vox's Ezra Klein’s interview of Anne Applebaum points out. Which makes Marco Rubio’s opinion that his party “must rebrand as party of 'multiethnic, multiracial, working-class' voters” all the more laughable. Now, if Rubio had pledged to end his party’s reliance on disinformation, that would be a start (See: “Americans Were Primed To Believe” in FiveThirtyEight).

So, where to for Republicans? A better question might be what can Democrats do for disaffected Republicans? Before the election, long-time Republican strategist Stuart Stevens wrote “A Message to Democrats from Your New Ally: Victory is near”. At the same time, it’s often been pointed out that Democrats need to learn to speak to non-Trumpian Republicans. Published in NZ’s Stuff, Lana Hart suggests “Midwestern oddities help explain voting patterns”. She has a point, even if some of how she got there is arguable. This of course puts aside the question of whether it might be viable for Democrats to move Left, but that’s too big a topic for a links post. Maybe another day.

On the positive side, there were more women elected to Congress. Writing for FiveThirtyEight, Meredith Conroy talks about “How A Record Number Of Republican Women Will — And Won’t — Change Congress”. The short version: It’s not enough to really change things, either for the Republican Party or the politics of Congress.

New Zealand’s Election

By anyone’s reckoning, New Zealand’s election was huge and decisive. 82.2% of enrolled voters cast ballots (and 94.1% of eligible voters were enrolled by the day before the election; voter enrollment is compulsory). Of those votes, 68% were cast in advance (before Election Day).

The New Zealand Labour Party (full disclosure: I’m a member of the party) received 50% of the Party Vote, entitling it to 65 seats in the new Parliament (out of 120). This is the first time since MMP elections began in 1996 that a party has received enough votes to govern alone, and it was the largest intake of new MPs the party has seen since the First Labour Government was elected in 1935. The new Labour Party Caucus is also its first to be majority female. Overall, the new Parliament is the most diverse New Zealand has had. Among other things, thanks to the election, "NZ Parliament most rainbow in world".

Naturally, it wasn’t all clear sailing. Rightwingers were up to mischief, as they so often are. Some Australian lobbyists for the energy industry slandered NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, in part because she pledged to take action on climate change (an example they’re clearly afraid Australia will follow).

There was also a nonsense theory that the election wasn’t really an overwhelming vote of approval for Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Government; instead, it was conservative “National Party voters voting for Labour as a way to keep the Green Party out of government. There’s no evidence of that, and a far more likely explanation is that it was just an overwhelming vote of approval for Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Government. Personally, I think any National voters who voted Labour—or, more likely, for the libertarian-ish far right Act Party, which got its highest vote in many, many years—did so because of how extremely unpopular National’s leader Judith Collins is. I know I’m not the only one who thinks that, either. We’ll eventually have more data about that later on.

A newly elected Green Party MP, Ricardo Menéndez March, who is the first Mexican immigrant to be elected to Parliament, was the target of abuse because of a sarcastic Tweet he made about having to take an oath of allegiance to the Queen. Now, full disclosure, I’ve always liked him, even when I’ve disagreed with him, because of his endearing politics nerdiness (takes one to know one), and it’s nice that he’s also openly gay. However, the main reason I back him on this is because there’s nothing wrong with sarcasm, even about a stupid oath. Besides, I’ve long been critical of the oath used precisely because it requires an oath of affirmation of allegiance to the Queen, not the people of New Zealand. The oath needs to change, no matter what the mouth-breathers choose to think.

Finally, there was one weird thing about the New Zealand Election, delivered courtesy of Facebook. When I shared the NZ Labour graphic above celebrating the new government being sworn in, Facebook inserted one of its standard links to election information—about the US election results. This is a company that has no problem serving up ads for things I’ve searched for online or mentioned in a FB comment (or even spoken about out loud…), yet it can’t tell the difference between something about the US election and that of another country. No wonder they have so much trouble stopping disinformation and hate speech. Maybe I’ll talk about politics more now. Maybe not. But at least I now have these things off my list.

That, and the NZ election shows how well a democracy's elections can be.

The test

Today (Tuesday in the USA) is Election Day. Will the country’s four-year nightmare end? Will it return to kindness and compassion? Is there a future for the USA’s democracy? Or, will it all come crashing down as the USA is destroyed? No one knows. No one.

The video above sums up why I support Joe Biden. Sure, there was no way that the Republican candidate could ever have gotten my support—my disdain for him is decades old. But after the utter, complete, and total disaster that the past four years have been, I went out of my way to vote this year, even though Illinois is thoroughly Blue, so, in that sense, it didn’t matter. But I needed to add my voice to the millions rejecting the corruption, lies, and creeping authoritarianism of the current regime, because lives really do—and literally—depend on it.

I know some people don’t like Joe Biden, for whatever reason. I know that that for Democrats it’s often because he isn’t Left enough. Some Centre-Right people may hesitate because they think he's too Left. I couldn’t possibly care less about any of that.

The truth is, we’re electing a president, not a saint. We’re electing a human, not a demigod. Which means there’s no such thing as a “perfect” candidate or president, and there never will be. Elections are choices only ever between who’s actually on the ballot, fullstop. The mythical “perfect” candidate isn’t in the mix, nor is someone’s idea of a “better” candidate. It’s always that way in a two-party system.

I voted for Joe Biden, not just against the Republican candidate. As I’ve said many times before, there have been plenty of times I was actually voting against a candidate—even here in New Zealand. Not this year, and not in either country’s election. There’s too much at stake.

Today the New Zealand Herald published an article about two Americans living in New Zealand. I know the Democrat through Facebook, and today I’ll meet her in person for the first time when I stop in at an election event here in Hamilton. That much I AM looking forward to, even though the election itself terrifies me.

However, I noticed something odd in that article, something aside from the fact that the supporter of the Republican candidate didn’t want to be named, although I think that’s telling. It was the glaring illogic of what he said.

He claimed his candidate would have “quite a decisive win” because “traditionally the Democrats vote by mail and the Republicans vote on the day." Logically, of course, the winner would be whoever gets the most votes, no matter if they’re cast by mail or in person. He goes on to absurdly say that “because the Democrats don't have a huge lead over Trump right now, once the voting day comes in, all those Trump voters go and vote on that day. That's just going to propel him right ahead.”

That’s just plain stupid, even by the logic of his own reckons. There’s been massive voter turnout already, and in many places votes cast reached two-thirds of the total votes cast in 2016 well before Election Day (and that no doubt includes plenty of Republican votes). Overall, Democrats begin with more voters than Republicans have, and the Republican candidate has been nothing but unpopular during his entire time occupying the White House. But somehow Republicans’ Election Day votes are supposed to magically change everything? Seriously? So, what’s he on about?

He’s just following his leader.

For months and months the Republican candidate has been attacking the US election process, and mail voting in particular—never mind that’s how HE votes! Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. More recently, he’s been demanding that the winner be whoever is leading on Election Day, even though that’s never happened in US history. There are reasons for all that.

The Republican candidate knows that, in fact, Democrats do tend to vote early, often by mail, and that in many states some or all of those votes won’t be counted on Election Day. He also knows that most Republicans do tend to vote on Election Day (we’ll see if that’s still true in the middle of a pandemic).

The Republican candidate knows that because of all this, he may very well have a narrow lead on election night, so he’ll declare “victory” and then he’ll send in his “army of lawyers”, as he put it, to try to prevent any votes being counted after Election Day. He knows that the Republican Supreme Court will rule in his favour—he said he’s depending on them. In that way, the Republicans could steal the election.

THAT is what the anonymous Republican in the article was alluding to, whether he knew it or not, and it’s what the Republican candidate has been promising for months: If they can’t win the election, if they can’t get more votes than Joe Biden, then they’ll steal it. Hopefully, the US republic still has enough strength in it to fight off such an attack against democracy itself, or maybe Biden will win by a big enough margin to put it out of reach of the Republican candidate’s “army of lawyers”.

In any case, we may well not know the end of the story for days or even weeks, but one way or another it’ll be done by early January.

The only way to change anything is to vote the Republican out of office, and the only way to do that is to vote for Joe Biden. In my case, it was definitely a vote FOR Joe every bit as much as it was a vote for change, but that doesn’t really matter. The only thing that matters is getting that man out. Democracy absolutely can do that—if it survives this test.

This post is based on, and synthesised from, various comments I made on Facebook over the past 24 hours.

This is the 5000th published post on this blog.

Lives depend on a change

Most up-to-date figures (at the moment): 237,178 Americans have died from Covid-19, which is roughly 20% of all the people in the world who have died from it—despite the USA having only 4.25% of the world’s population. 1046 Americans died in the past 24 hours alone, and at that rate, there will probably be at least 240,000 Americans dead by Election Day.

There were 89,048 NEW American cases in the past 24 hours, for a total of 8,852,730 cases. That’s roughly 20% of all the world’s cases, too.

Lives depend on a change. Biden/Harris 2020.

This one was for Nigel

View this post on Instagram

I just dropped off my ballot for the US Federal elections. It cost me NZ$50 to send by international courier because I can’t trust the US Postal Service to be able to deliver it, and it was important to me that I fulfilled a personal mission: When Nigel knew his cancer was terminal, he said to me, “I just hope I live long enough to see that bastard voted out of the White House.” He didn’t, of course, so I made it my personal mission to vote this year despite all the obstacles, to do my small bit to get the result we both wanted. As I completed the transaction, I thought to myself, “this one’s for you, Nigel.” That would’ve put a big grin on his face. Mine, too, actually.

A post shared by arthur_amerinz (@arthur_amerinz) on Oct 14, 2020 at 7:03pm PDT

Today I sent my US General Election ballot by International Courier. As I said in the caption to my Instagram post today (above, or follow the link), it was a bit of a personal mission: This one was for Nigel.

I vote in general elections every two years, and it’s a duty I always take very seriously. This year I haven’t been in to it, mainly because of losing Nigel, but he’s also the reason I wanted to be sure to vote.

Nigel didn’t make me promise much before he died, but one thing I promised myself was that I’d vote in honour of him. In a sense, it doesn’t matter whether I voted or not: Illinois is solidly Blue and Joe Biden will win it handily. And, as we all know, the popular vote nationwide doesn’t determine who is elected president. However, in 2016 the current occupant of the White House lost the nationwide popular vote by just under 3 million votes, and what if this year it was 13 million? If the nationwide popular vote for Biden is big enough, it will make an Electoral College victory more likely. It would also be very satisfying to see the Republican candidate hit with a large and humiliating rejection by voters, and it’s in that sense my vote actually does matter.

I marked my ballot using the same pen I used to vote in the New Zealand General Election. Also, just as I wore a red shirt to vote in the NZ election (red is the colour of the New Zealand Labour Party), today I wore a blue shirt (blue, of course, being associated with the USA’s Democratic Party). On both days I wore Nigel’s bracelet to bring him with me. It was the first time I voted in a US election “with” him (in previous years, he was at work).

My vote won’t actually matter in the big picture, but it was important to me, and has been all along because I needed to reject the current regime in the only way open to me. But my main motivation was that I promised myself I’d go out of my way, if necessary, to do it for Nigel (and spending $50 to send my ballot qualifies as going out of my way, in my opinion). That’s another promise to Nigel kept, the only one I made to myself on his behalf.

Obviously I have no idea what will happen next month (or beyond…), but I at least know that I did my part to make Nigel’s desire to see “that bastard voted out of the White House” come true, even though he didn’t live to see it. And that’s why this one was for Nigel.

The important part at left, the whole thing at right.

Good words

There are a lot of things that people say about grief that are too bland or not relevant to the majority of people. Every once in awhile, though, there is someone who gets it right, and yesterday I ran across a good short description, which was all the more surprising to me considering the source:

I know how it feels to lose someone you love. I know that deep black hole that opens up in your chest. That you feel your whole being is sucked into it. I know how mean and cruel and unfair life can be sometimes.

But I’ve learned two things.

First, your loved ones may have left this Earth but they never leave your heart. They will always be with you.

And second, I found the best way through pain and loss and grief is to find purpose.

Those remarks were by Joe Biden in his speech accepting the Democratic Nomination for US President (also in video above). It came after Biden talked about those Americans lost to Covid-19, after he said, “let me take a moment to speak to those of you who have lost the most,” and then sharing what he learned from grief.

This surprised me not because of who made the remarks—everyone knows about the tragedies Biden has endured. Instead, it surprised me because of its honesty and truthfulness in the description of what grief is like. Most people don’t speak so honestly about grief, and politicians even less so. It was really good to hear it.

I agree with him that finding purpose is important, even though I’m nowhere near being able to do that. It’s difficult to find purpose when nothing makes sense anymore, and when everything in life seems disconnected from us. Obviously, it’s easier for some people to find a sense of purpose than it is for others, but the sense in the advice is also obvious, even when it’s currently unrealisable, as it is for me.

We need more people to speak honestly and openly about their grief journeys, especially what helped them to move through it. That's what I try to do. More than that, we especially need more politicians to speak about it, and it’s refreshing to hear one express compassion and empathy for others who are struggling. That seems to be far too rare these days, which makes it needed all the more.

Every political speech by someone I support always has one or more things that particularly resonate with me, and I imagine that’s true for most people. That means others will take away from the speech other points that resonate with them. That’s nothing new. And while I’ve also heard a few (very few) politicians who could sincerely express empathy for others, it’s very different to hear a political leader talk about something I’m going through with the moral authority of someone who’s actually gone through it, too.

Some will dismiss his words on grief, I know, but most of them would never support him, anyway, so I don’t care about their feelings about the speech. Instead, I think it’s important to applaud a politician who leads the way even on such human and emotional matters, because it feels like it’s been missing for many years.

Joe Biden won’t win or lose because of that one section in his acceptance speech, and it’s unlikely even to sway many, if any, voters. That’s not the point. Joe Biden spoke directly to people like me with kindness and empathy and compassion. I sincerely hope he can bring that back into the White House.

2Political Podcast 127 is available

2Politiical Podcast is back with another episode—so soon!—and Episode 127 is now available from the podcast website. There, you can listen, download or subscribe to the podcast, or leave comments on the episode. The five most recent episodes are also listed with links in the right sidebar of this blog.

Dumber than a box of markers

One of the many "Sharpie-Gate" photo memes.

There’s a harsh, cold reality that the current occupant of the White House just doesn’t seem to understand: When you dig yourself into a hole, stop digging! Everyone else understands the truth of that statement, though smart people can be dumb about this and fail to pay attention to the wisdom. But the current occupant has staff—are there no grown-ups left to tell him he’s being an idiot over the latest hurricane?

Another reality is that if he’d merely mistakenly Tweeted out an already old forecast that Alabama was at 5-20% risk of tropical storm conditions in the wake of Hurricane Dorian, he could have easily moved on by saying that in the earliest stages experts thought it may have been true, but that they later felt otherwise. Most of us would have ignored that—after all, he says and does truly dumb and laughable things in the course of an average day, and this didn’t need to be that.

In this case, his bizarre overreaction to criticism of his erroneous Tweet says a LOT about him.

First, he pulled out an obviously doctored map to “prove” his erroneous claims about the possible path of Hurricane Dorian were “true”. Then he claimed he had no idea who doctored the map, but then reports emerged that he was the one who doctored the map, with an unnamed White House official commenting to The Washington Post, “No one else writes like that on a map with a black Sharpie.” Indeed, he always uses one when publicly signing a document, both real and fake.

As if that wasn’t dumb and laughable enough, then he Tweeted out a doctored CNN video to try and back up his false claims. So, when he Tweets out a doctored video, isn’t that the definition of “fake news”?

All of this comes from a man who claimed, "I'm not sure that I've ever even heard of a Category 5. I knew it existed." Trouble is, he said the exact same thing back in 2017 after Hurricane Irma hit. In fact, there have been four Category 5 hurricanes since that man took up residence in the White House, three of them since Irma. But, despite all that, he didn’t remember having heard of Category 5 hurricanes before, even though, well, he did—at least three times before Dorian.

Things then took yet another bizarre—and very ominous—turn when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which is supposed to be a scientific agency, politicised the weather by taking the side of the current occupant of the White House. They claimed that their National Weather Service office in Birmingham, Alabama, was wrong when they Tweeted on Sunday that the Alabama was not at risk. NOAA said the Birmingham office’s Tweet was “in absolute terms that were inconsistent with probabilities from the best forecast products available at the time.” Oh, really?! In fact, there was one prediction that southeastern Alabama might face a 5 to 10 percent chance of experiencing 40 mile per hour winds. In the end, winds there were actually no more than 9mph—proving the original assessment was correct.

So, why did they rush to defend the current occupant from—well, what exactly? Alarming people for no good reason? Or maybe it was because he was merely caught out misunderstanding something he heard somewhere (maybe on Fox “News”?). Whether it was their intent or not, they ended up running political interference designed to help the current occupant, but, worse, their politicisation also means people can no longer trust the NOAA to provide accurate forecasts—unless, it’s purely by accident, and in accordance with what seems to be their new mission of making the current occupant of the White House look good.

As for the latest utterly bizarre behaviour from the current occupant, there are several plausible conclusions. First, and simplest, it’s merely another example of his malignant narcissism, where he cannot be criticised, he cannot be shown to be wrong, and he has to lash out—lying whenever necessary—to “prove” his lies were true, and that he was “unfairly” criticised. However, it’s also entirely possible that this is the result of advancing dementia, or perhaps underlying insanity. Whatever the case is, this latest bizarre behaviour is clearly not normal, and there’s something seriously wrong with him—as in, 25th Amendment seriously wrong. That option won’t be used, obviously, so we must expect to see a lot more utterly bizarre and inappropriate behaviour from the current occupant.

We also now know that there are no grown-ups in the regime, no one who can tell him to stop digging himself in deeper. At least when he does dumb things like this it gives us yet another reason to laugh at him. Right now, that’s all we get. Hopefully in November 2020 the joke will finally end.

Unions make us strong

Monday of this week was Labor Day in the USA (New Zealand’s Labour Day is the end of October), and also the 125th anniversary of the first one. For years now, a common narrative has been about the decline of unions, and the Right has constantly added rhetoric about how awful they think unions are. In fact, things are better than they have been in some time, and they’re likely to get better.

The graphic above is by Gallup who recently reported, “As Labor Day Turns 125, Union Approval Near 50-Year High”. Gallup explains it this way:

Union approval averaged 68% between Gallup's initial measurement in 1936 and 1967, and consistently exceeded 60% during that time. Since 1967, approval has been 10 points lower on average, and has only occasionally surpassed 60%. The current 64% reading is one of the highest union approval ratings Gallup has recorded over the past 50 years, topped only in March 1999 (66%), August 1999 (65%) and August 2003 (65%) surveys.

That sounds like good news, but tGallup also reported:

Higher public support for unions in the past few years likely reflects the relatively good economic conditions in place, particularly low unemployment. By contrast, the lowest union approval ratings in Gallup history came from 2009 through 2012, years of high unemployment that followed the Great Recession. Gallup also observed relatively low union approval during the poor economic times in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Put another way, the one thing that will stand up for workers—unions—are shunned when the economy turns bad. That could plausibly mean that workers blame unions for higher unemployment, rather than the corporations cutting costs to maintain profit levels.

We see some evidence for that assumption in the data about union membership. Again according to Gallup, around 10% of the USA’s full and part-time workers belong to a union, which continues record low levels.

The largest share of unionised workers are in so-called “white collar” jobs, especially workers in all levels of government. While there’s little statistical difference in party identification (union members are slightly more Democratic than Republican), the biggest differences are in geographic region (workers in the South are least likely to be unionised), and income (workers earning over $100,000 per year are more likely to be union members).

In recent years, unions have been working to unionise low-paid workers, such as fast food workers, whose employment conditions and schedules leave them vulnerable to being disadvantaged or even exploited by their employers. That means that generally low-paid workers in industries like fast food, retail, and service jobs (including “gig economy” jobs like ride-share drivers) could be a real growth area for union membership, just as it was for similarly vulnerable workers in factories a century ago.

This post was inspired, in part, by a US Labor Day post by Roger Green, “Labor Day: unions; corporate greed”. Roger discussed the current state of work in the USA, and referred to a piece titled, “The Answer to Burn Out at Work Isn’t “Self-Care” — It’s Unionizing”, which included my current favourite observation about work in the Corporatist Era: “Eating a salad isn’t going to fix the systemic problems at your workplace.” Indeed. But unionising would help.

Labour unions have fallen on hard times, relative to their past, but the same economic forces that have made things so dire for ordinary working people in the USA may also help unions rise again. Sick of being exploited and constantly losing out, they tried voting for a political party actively working against them, and many of them put their trust in a presidential candidate they knew to be a con-man and fraud, all in a desperate hope that things might get better for them. They haven’t, and they won’t. To really change things will require doing things differently, and joining a union could be an important step in that direction.

Also, voting for the Democratic Party wouldn’t be a bad idea, either. Nothing they’ve tried so far has changed things. It’s time to try something different.

Related:

Robert Reich talks about “The 5 Biggest Corporate Lies About Unions”:

Cuomo fact-checks Trump's claims of genius

In the video above, CNN's Chris Cuomo takes on the current occupant of the White House’s claims of genius and him saying that he knows more than anyone on numerous subjects. And yet, the current occupant is a genius on one thing, the same thing that makes him so awful: His ability “to bring out the devil in us all”.

With the current regime doing so many terrible and even illegal things so fast, it’s impossible for anyone to keep up with them all. Every day I see at least a dozen different political things I want to comment on, stuff the regime has done, or that the current occupant has said, but there’s just not enough time to do that, especially when I’m doing this for free, as a hobby.

So, I’ve decided to share more videos like this one (not necessarily with much comment from me) in an effort to help keep issues in our minds, and also to ensure the regime doesn’t get away with sending it’s misdeeds down the memory hole. Some videos will be challenging, some may be very hard-nosed, or they may put things more stridently than I might, but I’ll nevertheless share the things I do for one reason: Before we can erase this stain of this regime from our minds, we’ll need to clean up all of the mess they’ve created. To do that, we’ll first need to remember everything the regime has done so that we can be sure to repair and heal the USA. This is just one way to help us all to remember how bad it really is right now.