Sunday, December 27, 2020

Merry Christmas, Hanukkah Sameach, and Xin Nian Kuai Le!

We are united by our love of the Organ Mountains, the Chihuahuan Desert, this community, and our homegrown chile, never misspelled “chili.”

We share an ideal of freedom, embodied imperfectly in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and by the imperfect men who wrote those and freed us from the dominion of a king. That they held other humans as slaves sullies their fine words. Nor did they recognize women or folks of other colors as their equals.

Having acted selfishly and thoughtlessly, and spoken out with youth’s arrogance and now with curmudgeonly impatience, I too am far from perfect. I’ve had excellent teachers and wonderful friends, but none has been perfect.

Our country, like ourselves, is a work in progress. While we have grown, and are correcting our Founders’ vision to embrace those whom they did not, we built our powerful country by slaughtering those from whom we took the land, and abusing those whom we enslaved to fuel our economy. We have created deep economic inequality, particularly during recent decades. While we have fought tyranny, we have also bullied many smaller nations into accepting tyranny.

Here’s hoping that in 2021 we have the strength and thoughtfulness to be the best country (and community) we can be. And to listen to each other about what that means to each of us.

In 2020 we are united by the pain and confusion of the plague. We disagree on how best to survive COVID-19, but all are suffering, whether from the illness itself; grief; lost jobs, savings, or dreams; hunger and thirst; or depressing isolation. Our youth have been forbidden their bold explorations: physical sports, intimacy, harmless mischief, trial and error, and “bull sessions,” all compelling and necessary. A year is a huge chunk of a young person’s life. Our loneliest old folks can’t hug us. And consider the breaking hearts of parents who now cannot even feed their kids.

We have focused more on our disagreements than on what we share, just as our bad knee or aching back grabs more attention than the many bodily parts that work just fine. We scream at each other about different political figures, without noticing how much we all love laughing with friends and watching our children grow, or feeling the sunset glow of the Organ Mountains somewhere inside. We enjoy watching light play on the water in an irrigated pecan field, even while we fret over water scarcity.

For most of us, something larger than our ego demands our respect, something we try to honor when we act. It may be God, Allah, or Jehovah Shalom; Changing Woman, Krishna, or Buddha; our connection to humanity, to nature, to Mother Earth; or just a nagging sense of Mystery.

These are difficult times, even without a pandemic. We are bitterly divided. But what if our humility, our love for something more significant, unified rather than divided? If shared humanity outshone petty fears and jealousies?

Without blinding ourselves to the world’s injustices, perhaps we each could reach into our deepest values, which are surprisingly similar, and live by those, while listening critically to how our pastors, priests, and politicians urge us to do so. Practice the love and compassion that Jesus, Buddha, and Changing Woman taught.

It’s a stretch for me, too; but when the Organs go all red tonight, let’s try to share the glow, be the glow, and spread unexpected kindnesses daily.

                                           – 30 --

 

[The above column will appear Wednesday in the print edition of the Las Cruces Sun-News, and appeared this morning, Sunday, 20 December 2020, on the newspaper's website and will shortly appear on KRWG’s website. A related radio commentary will air during the week on KRWG (90.7) and KTAL-LP. (101.5 http://www.lccommunityradio.org/), and will be available on demand on KRWG’s site.]

[ A challenge in this column was to handle our country’s past, as well as present conduct I fervently oppose.

I opted for “we” and ”us,” in an effort to accept some responsibility for bad acts from which I probably benefited in some fashion but which preceded my lifetime (or adulthood) or which I strongly opposed. Further, although one side my family was here (in New England) by the mid-17th Century, and I had relatives at Bunker Hill, in the Civil War, and even at Wounded Knee, on the other we were Jews who arrived in the late 19th Century, with little money and little power, long after many of the worst blots on our national conscience.

I am a white man, and not young. These facts do not disqualify me from opining on controversial matters; but they warrant a certain reserve. That others and their families have suffered at the hands of this country, while I mostly have not, obligates me to listen with extra care to what those folks have to say, and to respect their viewpoints. Too long this country and others have rather assumed that only the voices of literate white men really warranted a listen. To pretend otherwise would be fatuous. However,
redressing the balance, making amends, finding our way toward the best and fairest exchange of ideas possible, is a more subtle task than most folks care to admit.
]

[Do you believe all that?” someone asked me, with regard to the column’s somewhat hopeful closing thoughts. Do I believe that we really are so unified, as citizens or humans, and do I believe many of us could see past our divisions? The answer is somewhere between “Yes!” and “I would like to.” I do see, over and over, points in common among my friends who would not even begin conversations with each other. Too, many, whether Christian or Islamic, have misread their religions as

justifying, or even requiring, intolerance and even violence. Some preachers and mullahs whip their congregations into a spiteful frenzy. People professing religions kill and kidnap and otherwise abuse other folks. That’s real; as is the deep bitterness it engenders in victims and their families. And, sadly, it does seem easier somehow for folks to wrap themselves in religion or the flag to exclude others en masse, than to face the strangers and make the subtler observations that come with increasing knowledge of others.) ]

[ How our current national divide stacks up against earlier eras is worth a separate column some day.

We complain of the incivility of Mr. Trump and most politicians (mostly those the speaker opposes, of course). I recall that when I lived on Taiwan, I was a bit startled and amused that national legislators sometimes had fistfights right there on the floor of the Legislative Yuan. Only much later did I read of a U.S. Representative [southerner Preston Brooks of South Carolina, nephew to Senator Andrew Butler] caning abolitionist Charles Sumner of Massachusetts to within an inch of his life on the floor of the U.S. Senate, in 1856. The brutal attack left Sumner unconscious, and he needed three years to recover.

I did know how divided we had felt in my youth, by civil rights and the Viet Nam War. How it felt to be in this country in those days, expressing an unpopular minority viewpoint, was, frankly, quite like the mood in movies set in Nazi Germany or Vichy France, where the protagonist may not be breaking the law but is subjected to minor abuses of power freuqently and is always aware that something worse could happen, with the legal authorities looking the other way or even participating.

But many of our views – racial equality, integration, the wrongness of the War, and even the urgency of fighting poverty – sooner or later became generally accepted ideas, embodied in legislation. Tolerance seemed the norm for rather a long time, though not perfectly so. Diversity (ethnically, artistically, sexually) became more the norm for much of the U.S. However, some combination of vestigial racism and legitimate grievances about how the changing economy had affected workers and farmers gave us Mr. Trump, and a revival of racism in high places. ]

 

Sunday, December 20, 2020

Steve! This Christmas, Why Not Act in a Christian Manner toward New Mexicans?

How about we stop beating a dead horse with election suits and help limit the dead New Mexicans? The Presidential Election’s over. The pandemic ain’t.

COVID-19 cases surged this fall. Here and elsewhere. Many nations responded, reimposing restrictions. The U.S. didn’t. Worldwide, the number of new cases has fallen of late. Several countries, including France, Italy, and Saudi Arabia, have seen drops of more than 50%; and other major countries have seen declines of 30-50%, including India and Norway.

By contrast, in the U.S. the number of new cases has risen 51%.

Compare the U.S. with Doña Ana County. The nation’s seven-day moving average of new cases jumped from 50,000+ cases per day October 20 to more than thrice that by November 27. In that same period, the County’s moving average rose from 100 cases per day to 320. (Similar rise, more than trebling in five weeks.) Our Governor responded with stronger restrictions. By December 15th, cases nationally were up to more than 4x the October 20h figure. Meanwhile, the County’s moving average dropped back down to 100 within three weeks. Maybe restrictions work.

We have a lame-duck president who could have saved lives. His administration should have developed a coherent testing policy. He could have used his bully pulpit to urge people to wear masks and observe other precautions. Instead, he mocked masks, and now tweets lame fraud allegations and insults Republican officials. Embarrassment over his electoral loss has taken precedence over citizens’ lives.

Yo, Steve Pearce! You’re a big-shot pal of Trump’s here in New Mexico. You’re supposed to be a smart guy. YOU could be urging people to wear masks and avoid crowds and indoor gatherings. Instead, we saw you in September proudly unmasked with the “Women for Trump” buses, on which everyone crowded together, mostly maskless.

Instead, you make public statements that face-covering rules “have been meeting a lot of resistance” elsewhere in the country, and “That is just a foreshadowing of what you’re going to find in the state of New Mexico.” You also spoke of “mixed messages” about mask-wearing. There were, at the start; but that’s a long, long time ago. I hope you’ve learned since then. Or are these “mixed messages” like the “mixed messages” you choose to see from scientists about global warming?

Instead you sue the Governor over health restrictions. I agree small businesses got a bum break. Some that I love may die. I shop local. But the true fix for small businesses would have been to get serious about limiting the spread sooner and more sharply. Didn’t hear you pushing your followers to do that. (Because you care about Steve Pearce, not “the little guy” you hold up as a straw man?)

Instead you waste resources helping with a frivolous election lawsuit. Trump lost New Mexico by 11 points. If you think he got defrauded, maybe you’ve forgotten that Lujan Grisham whipped some Republican by FOURTEEN points.

I get it that you see possible political capital in carping at the Governor. But, c’mon, help everyone by combining that with clear and heartfelt warnings that people should mask up. The virus is the enemy.

Urging people to act in a way that helps them and their fellow citizens, even if they resent restrictions, would resemble leadership. Urging those who listen to you to help save lives would also be a rather Christian thing to do. Particularly at Christmas.

                                                            - 30 -

 

[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 20 December 2020, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper’s website (First Things First: the Virus Is the Enemy) and KRWG’s website. A related radio commentary will air during the week on KRWG (90.7) and KTAL-LP. (101.5 http://www.lccommunityradio.org/), and will be available on demand on KRWG’s site.]

[I hope I’m wrong. I searched a variety of terms combining Steve Pearce with masks, or “should wear masks,” etc. Didn’t find evidence of a serious change-of-heart. The suit claiming Lujan Grisham lacked authority to impose emergency health rules was frivolous, legally, from the start. Arguments about whether she should have made somewhat different choices are anyone’s right; so far as I know, she ain’t God; but she seemed to be trying hard to act appropriately based on studying the data. All that aside, though, if I owned a small cafe or art gallery, I might be frustrated by the rules; but I’d sure be furious at folks who spurn masks instead of sacrificing a little to stall the virus spread. If we could do that, how to handle a crisis becomes an academic question. ]

[The United States Supreme Court has long held that a state legislature can give the Governor the authority to close businesses during a health crisis. The New Mexico Legislature authorized the Governor to issue such an executive order. In 2003 it enacted the Public Health Emergency Response Act. (See the statute here, on Justia.com) ]

[It has been clear for months that when a significant majority of the people in a community wear masks and observe physical distancing, the virus spread is much more limited. Specific studies have shown this for months. So have observations on the ground. Even Sweden, an outlier in Europe, letting people frolic in bars without masks and whatnot, decided that seeing way higher numbers of cases than its neighbors was no longer tenable, and implemented rules. In fact, research

published in the journal Nature Medicine in October indicated that universal mask-wearing could prevent nearly 130,000 deaths from COVID-19 through the end of February. The analysis found that even if only 85 percent of the population wore masks in public, nearly 96,000 lives could be saved.

But without universal masking, which the study defined as 95 percent compliance, more than a half a million lives could be lost to COVID-19, researchers at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation projected.

[NOTE: Since I sent in the column Friday, the breaking news has been that a more infectious (but not necessarily more deadly) strain of the virus is sufficiently widespread in the U.K. that folks there are experiencing new lockdowns, and several countries have banned flights from the U.K.  That it's more infectious (and COVID-19 as we've known it is not the most highly infectious of viruses) is obviously significant.  Further, if it is resistant to the vaccines so far developed (and I've as yet heard nothing indicating that's so) then our hope of some return to "normal" life by next summer would evaporate.  How all this impacts what I've written above is an interesting question.  My first thought is that it illustrates the importance of folks like Pearce and Trump and so on getting more actively on board the mask train; but someone could also argue at some point, if the vaccine didn't curb this new strain, or the next new strain, that coronavirus illnesses and deaths will eventually become just something we need to live with.  Get it and move on.  Or die.  We're not there yet, though.  I do think, though, that all of this emphasizes the importance of making decisions more solidly based on facts and science and less on superstition or political convenience.]

Sunday, December 13, 2020

Remembering Jean (1920-1994) on her 100th Birthday

 Jean Edmunds was born 100 years ago today, 13 December, in far Northern Maine.

Her family owned a lot of farmland, and grew plenty of potatoes. Like their community, they were white, Protestant (Episcopalian), and Republican.

Jean attended Wellesley College in Massachusetts. After graduating, she learned that the Chinese Ambassador, T.V. Soong, and his wife were seeking a Wellesley grad as live-in governess.

The Chinese said of T.V.’s sisters, the famous Soong Sisters: “One loved money, one loved power, and one loved China.” One married a wealthy New York banker. One married Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the Chinese Nationalist forces supported by the U.S. The third sister, Ching-ling, married Sun Yat-sen, leader of the 1911 Revolution and first President of the Chinese Republic. (Later Soong Ching-ling leadership positions in the People’s Republic.)

Jean took the governess position. She grew to love Madame Soong and the Soongs’ three daughters. Madame Chiang, who always urged her sister that Jean should eat with the help, less so. Jean kept a diary about the interesting people she met until the evening she came home and found the family reading aloud from it at the dinner table.

World War II was in full swing. General Joe Stilwell visited often. Jean went out with Stillwell’s top aide, a Hawaiian-born Chinese, who eventually proposed to her. They didn’t marry, but stayed good friends. (In the diary she railed about white Americas’ prejudice against such a marriage.)

In 1945, Jean met a Marine pilot, back from flying bombers in the Pacific. Early on, when she visited her parents in Maine, he borrowed a plane and flew to Fort Fairfield to surprise her. Her family liked him; they respected his war record, and his bridge-playing; but when Jean said they planned to marry, her parents stayed up all night talking it over. Her suitor was Jewish. In the morning her parents gave their blessing.

The newlyweds moved to Manhattan, where he wrote for Time and they saw lots of theater. Jean loved the city life, but when she became pregnant, they moved to a suburb.

For years, Jean played the female lead in all the amateur theatricals. At parties, she played the piano and sang, while everyone gathered around to sing with her, including the dog. Commercial artists sometimes used her as a model. Mostly she devoted herself to her husband and their children. Much later, those children wished for her that she had pursued her own career, but were grateful for the full-time attention of such a talented and intelligent person.

The first years, they lived on a winding country lane where they were surprised to learn that most neighbors were Communists. (At the height of McCarthyism, a top U.S. Communist Party leader lived across the street.) The neighbors thought it odd that Jean wanted to start a Cub Scout den, which she did, including two boys of color. When all the town’s dens got together, some of the adults sniffed at seeing two nonwhite boys in her den.

Jean and Warren stayed married until her death from cancer in 1994. By then, life was wildly different from what she’d known in her Maine childhood. But she’d weathered the changes, staying imaginative and caring.

How I wish we could put 100 candles on a cake and eat it with her! Even a Zoom-style party couldn’t dim the brightness of the first eyes I remember.

                                                - 30 -

[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 13 December 2020, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website (where I do not select the headlines) and KRWG’s website. A related radio commentary will air during the week on KRWG (90.7) and KTAL-LP. (101.5 http://www.lccommunityradio.org/), and will be available on demand on KRWG’s site.]

[The column sparks mixed feelings in me. Its subject doesn’t. But putting that kind of personal stuff in a newspaper column does. So I won’t add much.

The Soong Sisters, and now-forgotten T.V., are an interesting study. Mother hated Sterling Seagrave’s book on them, The Soong Dynasty, because she loved Madame Soong. However, history judges them harshly, except perhaps Soong Ching-ling. Here’s an account of a newer book on the "infamous" sisters, which I haven’t yet read. When I lived in Taiwan, forty

years later, Madame Chiang was still alive and her soon was Premier of “the Republic of China” on Taiwan.”]

[I mention my grandparents' concern about Mother marrying Father, a Jew from Brooklyn.  It's a story they told me much later.  As a kid, I experienced a stern but loving Grandfather and a soft and loving Grandmother, who doted on us.  I believe they like Father fine; they sure seemed to, from this kid's vantage point.  However, I think they worried about how we'd all be treated by others in the U.S.  Note that the film, Gentleman's Agreement came out in 1949, and that the book was a best seller in 1947.  Both explored anti-Semitism through the eyes of a protagonist who pretends to be Jewish in order to write a magazine article on the subject, and finds the consequences pretty unpleasant.]

[My parents had no clue that “the Colony” on Mt. Airy, in Croton-on-Hudson, probably had more Communists and leftists per capita than anywhere in the country.  (Croton was notably artsy: I played in some ruined barns where Isadora Duncan had danced, and in the movie Reds, it's where John Reed and his wife go to live.) Mother, used to Fort Fairfield, was astonished when the family across the street never came over to welcome the new neighbors. One winter morning she decided she would go and introduce herself to them. She may not have known that they were Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Bittelman and that he was a high official in the Communist Party U.S.A. The only sense they could make of this WASP lady appearing at their house was probably that she was spying on them, so Mrs. Bittelman sat with my mother on the outdoor porch, in freezing winter weather, until my mother decided sitting longer probably wouldn’t be good for her infant, Peter. It didn’t help that early one morning my father spotted a car parked by our mailbox on the country lane. (It was called Memory Lane, had fewer than a dozen houses on it and no street numbers, and dead-ended in the words.) Suspicious, he went out and found two men. When they got out of the car, he recognized one, from the Marines. The guy now worked for the FBI, Bittelman had had a big party that night, so they were there observing, and writing down license-plate numbers. My father told him to come in and have coffee afterward, which probably looked a little suspicious to some of our neighbors.]

[I recall seeing my mother starring in amateur productions of The Warrior’s Husband, playing the Amazon Queen (and wearing a long, blonde wig), and Dial M for Murder. I’m told that at the cast party after the latter, I was not very friendly to the actor who played the man who tries to murder my mother’s character, but whom she manages to stab with a pair of scissors. I was old enough to know it was a play, but I’d just seen him try to strangle Mother! I’m also told that at some production I yelled out “That’s my mother!” during the play. After one of my own first acting roles, Mother claimed that she had yelled out, “That’s my son!” but I didn’t hear it.   I did not yet exist at the time of one production, or was too young to be taken to watch: in Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians, ten people are lured to an island and killed, one by one, in retribution for situations where they killed someone in a way the law couldn't reach.  Each guest knows the killer must be one of the other guests; but guests keep disappearing, in ways tracking a nursery rhyme.  The last two guests are a governess (there because two of her charges drowned, perhaps because of her negligence) and a veteran of World War II (whose speeding sportscar, if I recall correctly, had run down a child).  They have been falling in love, but now each is sure the other is the killer.  How I should have loved to see Father and Mother play the two leading roles!]

[Particularly in the larger house we moved to when I was 12, Mother singing with many cocktail-party guests singing along is a pretty common memory.  At one point, an Afghan dog appeared at the house.  She took him to the animal shelter, thinking to adopt, but when she learned that a nice young man who worked there had wanted to adopt the dog, she switched plans such that the dog lived with her until the young man was ready to take the dog.  He took the dog; but some months later, apparently, he had abused it badly, and it returned to the shelter.  They informed my mother, so Czar came to live with her.  When she played the piano, he came and sat by it and howled.  Singing along.  After awhile, uncertain whether perhaps Czar was howling in pain, she tried putting him outside when she practiced piano, but he came as close as possible to the front door and howled.  This became a huge hit at cocktail parties, of course.  Czar would come sit by the piano and sing along with everyone.  One night a famous concert pianist was at the party.  After watching Mother and Czar, he asked politely, "Do you suppose he would do that if I played?"  Mother laughed and said that Czar sang when anyone played.  "Do you mind if I try?" the pianist asked.  He sat down and played.  Czar sat quietly and respectfully, watching him.]

[Apparently Mother shared a birthday with George Schultz, former cabinet member under several U.S. presidents. This morning I read an op-ed by him in the Washingon Post, published on his 100th birthday. One of his main points was how essential trust is, whether in families, diplomacy, or most any other endeavor. I agree. He notes that a good leader trusts his people, and thereby engenders their trust in him.]




[One evening in a bar in D.C., my cousin Frank and I got trying to figure out what would be the deepest divisions between categories of human beings.  Deeper than Catholic-Jew or white-black.  Man-woman is rather obvious.  Some vets would argue "between those who have served in a war and those who have not," and I respect that possibility.  What we came up with, eventually, was "whether or not, as a child, you ever doubted you were truly loved."  If you think about it, I think you'll conclude that it's huge.  I did not ever doubt that I was loved, although I sure gave them a hell of a hard time.]

Sunday, December 6, 2020

Act V - Where Disaster Often Strikes?

 I’ve mostly ignored Donald Trump’s whining about alleged “election fraud.” His lawyers can’t show courts reasoned legal arguments or even a hint of factual evidence to support his claims. Recently, a district judge’s opinion trashing Trump’s case was unanimously upheld by a three-judge panel of the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, all Republican appointees. The decision was written by the judge Trump had appointed.

Courts are laughing. Trump is laughing all the way to the bank. His election-fraud fairy tales have brought in $200 million. People contribute to keep elections pure, and Trump will use the money as he likes. One big donor has sued Trump for fraud, having donated $1.5 million to fight election fraud before realizing there’s no there there. (Get in line, pal!)

Rudy Giuliani and Sydney Powell are downright comical. Facebook friends post Trump’s attorneys’ promises to provide evidence tomorrow that will rock the world. When no evidence gets provided, my Facebook friends fall silent about that, and repost some investigative report that Joe Biden shot Santa Claus in the gut and buggered one of the elves.

More serious people keep reminding me that not only do elections have consequences, but widely-disseminated manure can too. The analysis that has me breaking my resolution not to mention Mr. Trump is by Jochen Bittner, a co-head of the debate section for the weekly newspaper Die Zeit.

When Germany lost World War I, the conservatives who’d started the War refused to accept the loss. Their denial started the “stab-in-the-back” myth that liberals and Jews had betrayed the Nation. Like Trump’s denials, it made no sense; but it was emotionally satisfactory to returning soldiers, and, years later, Adolf Hitler brilliantly exploited it.

Notes Bittner, "Without a basic consensus built on a shared reality, society split into groups of ardent, uncompromising partisans. And in an atmosphere of mistrust and paranoia, the notion that dissenters were threats to the nation steadily took hold.” (Sound familiar?)

Already, Trump’s claims of cheating have inspired Trump partisans to threaten to execute civil servants who are counting the votes. The problem has become so serious that Georgia Republicans are begging Trump to stop, lest lives be lost. The backlash could affect Georgia’s two U.S. Senate campaigns, but Trump doesn’t care. He’s showing, yet again, that Trump cares only about Trump.

Even Trump’s lapdog, Attorney-General William Barr, who violated DOJ norms to help Trump, has had to admit there’s no sign of significant fraud. Meanwhile, two convicted felons Trump got out of jail are singing Trump’s song. Roger Stone (whom Barr got released early) stated this week, "I just learned of absolute incontrovertible evidence of North Korean boats delivering ballots through a harbor in Maine." Meanwhile perjurer Michael Flynn (pardoned by Trump) urged Trump to “temporarily suspend” the Constitution and redo the election. Says Flynn, “Today, the current threat to our United States by the international and domestic socialist/communist left is much more serious than anything Lincoln or our nation has faced in its history – including the civil war.” (Say what!?!?)

People believe these clowns. Like poisonous chemicals oozing downhill from an industrial accident, this stuff will damage us. Meanwhile, the spectacle distracts from immediate and substantial harms: Trump eviscerating the non-partisan civil service and illegally pushing Congressionally-authorized emergency COVID-19 funds out of Biden’s reach.

                                         - 30 -

 

 


[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 6 December 2020, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website on the newspaper's website and KRWG’s website. A related radio commentary will air during the week on KRWG (90.7) and KTAL-LP. (101.5 http://www.lccommunityradio.org/), and will be available on demand on KRWG’s site. ]

[Trump’s graceless exit thoroughly matches his performance in office. As the nation hits new records for new coronavirus cases and deaths, Trump, depressed, is barely even pretending to work. By one count, he tweeted 145 times in a week about his hurt feelings from the election, and four times about the pandemic – basically to insist that he was right. There is little doubt that dozens or scores of the deaths could have been avoided had we had a grownup in the White House. Trump isn’t too interested in all the dead, let alone doing anything constructive about it, except to insist he isn’t at all responsible. He’s consistently valued his own interests above the nation’s.

But what’s also consistent is that in groaning over his absurd shenanigans, we give shorter shrift than we might to the ugly things being done in his name. For example, leftover emergency funds for coronavirus, authorized by law with any excess remaining in 2026 required to be returned,, could have been useful to folks who are struggling to deal with all this. Trump’s lackey, Mnuchin, insisted on returning what’s in the account to the Federal Reserve Bank, preventing the new administration from using it for its intended purpose. The Fed said “Please, don’t,” but Mnuchin insisted. Did Trump know or care? Meanwhile, an important protection we have against dictatorship is an independent civil service that is supposed to do what’s right, without partisanship, which minimizes the possible pressure by any President (Republican, Democrat, or Green) to do what’s right for the President’s pals or political future, rather than what’s good for the nation. Trump and Co. are trying to “reclassify” huge numbers of employees so that they and ultimately we, the people lose that protection. Meanwhile he abruptly withdrew all our troops from Somalia. I frankly haven’t looked into that, and have no opinion, except that it wasn’t a considered, thought-out, rational decision.]

[Meanwhile, his sulking and screaming are what they are. Peter Baker's story in the New York Times reported recent incidents, and the efforts by some Republicans to get Trump to focus on at least the election of two U.S. Senators from Georgia. Baker quoted Shakespearean scholar Jeffrey R. Wilson (author of Shakespeare and Trump):


This is classic Act V behavior. The forces are being picked off and the tyrant is holed up in his castle and he’s growing increasingly anxious and he feels insecure and he starts blustering about his legitimate sovereignty and he starts accusing the opposition of treason.”


This morning (Sunday) we heard a former Georgia Senator trying to be delicate about Trump’s appearance at a rally for the two Republican Senatorial candidates. (Another story noted that Trump “briefly invited them up on the stage with him.”) Trump spent most of his speaking-time repeating vague and groundless claims he’d been cheated; but the alleged cheating was done in Georgia by a Republican Secretary of State (who
apparently did his job in a professional and nonpartisan way) and Republican Governor Brian Kemp (who has no authority in the matter, but whom Trump is attacking as a gutless “RINO” for not taking some extraordinary and probably illegal action).

How must those folks and their families, friends, and supporters feel? How must people who respect Kemp and the others feel? Too,
telling folks the process is controlled by evil Communists, so that his victory was stolen from him, doesn’t exactly motivate his fans to rush out to brave the pandemic and vote. The former Georgia Senator said he couldn’t explain what had motivated those two Senate candidates to echo Trump’s “election fraud” nonsense, when there was no evidence of anything beyond the usual isolated incidents (presumably on both sides) during the 3 November election.
]