Former President Barack Obama Shows Leadership

"No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion..." pic.twitter.com/InZ58zkoAm

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 13, 2017

"...For love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite." - Nelson Mandela

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 13, 2017

"People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love..."

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 13, 2017

With three simple tweets, former President Barack Obama gave Americans across the spectrum, and people around the world, what they longed for in the face of the Charlottesville tragedy: wisdom, sanity, compassion, leadership.

It's been distressing to watch how the current administration has laid siege to everything that the best of America stands for and all the progress made by Barack and Michelle Obama and Obama's administration. When this couple were in the White House it was a place of knowledge, experience, respect, dignity, wisdom, inclusion, joy, exuberance, celebration of life and of people from every walk of life.

The shock of the election result wore off quickly, leaving grief, outrage and determination to preserve values without which no society can exist for long without imploding. The resistance, from Democratic politicians, citizens, academia and the liberal media, has been valiant and successful. But the constant deluge of scandals, back-biting, lies—scum of the earth stuff—has been exhausting to witness. It's hard to resist the idea that social progress in the US is being swamped and that everything the Obamas worked towards, every battle fought and won over the years for Civil Rights, equality and justice has been lost.

But the truth is that in the battle between Good and evil, so well illustrated by Charlottesville, and Donald Trump equating white supremacists and Nazi supporters to counter-protesters, Good has triumphed as Republicans, Democrats and world leaders condemned the president's support of what has been recognized as evil for a long time now.  Nobody but Mr. Trump believes these people have a place at the table. Nobody but Mike Pence has stood with Trump.

Good can seem fragile in this battle, when overshadowed by monstrous forces, but in truth it has roots sinking deep into the human psyche, into societies. And that gives it, ultimately, much greater power.

America's social progress hasn't ever been a smooth journey. But it's been a real one with real successes. They, and the achievements of Barack Obama and his administration have been assailed, but not dismantled in a way that can't be fixed, even though the government is entirely GOP-controlled. Republicans are at war with each other and their constituents, and the 2018 mid-terms loom. The Trump administration has bully power but nothing else and it is disintegrating at the speed of light, as is the president, by all accounts. Out of control, still obsessed with his campaign, he's been firing people at random when they get more attention than him or displease him, creating such havoc that nobody wants to work for him.

Now he's fired Steve Bannon, who has gone back to Breitbart News, thrilled at the prospect of war with the administration. Or so he says, as reported by The New York Post.  

The president's support base is reportedly shrinking, but former president Barack Obama's tweets about Charlottesville broke the record for the most Twitter likes. That's a pretty direct poll. And he's not getting any press coverage these days. There's power in the man, the kind that lasts because it has love and integrity as a foundation; it's the kind that rewards and builds.

In this existential battle in America—one that all of us can relate to in some way or another in our lives—Good has trodden and is still treading a steady path towards victory. It will come and then we'll see that social progress is not destructible by evil. 

Will Donald Trump Quit Before The Inauguration? Can Republicans Hold Onto Their Power?

Participants in the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965. 

From Library of Congress. Photo by Peter Pettus

25 March 1965. The day Martin Luther King led thousands to the capitol steps in Montgomery, Alabama, after marching for five days from Selma, Alabama, to support African Americans, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Southern Christian Leadership had campaigned for voting rights. King told the assembled crowd:

 "There never was a moment in American history more honorable and more inspiring than the pilgrimage of clergymen and laymen of every race and faith pouring into Selma to face danger at the side of its embattled Negroes." 

African Americans had endured generations of violence and assault to every part of their being, but they endured and their spirit of resistance slowly gained momentum until it peaked under the leadership of Martin Luther King. The world lost one of its greatest men, and thousands endured further assaults and violence for the Civil Rights Movement to succeed, but it prevailed in the end.

Fast forward to Nov 9 2016. The day the world got pretty damn dark again for millions. The day the quintessential banana republic bigot was elected as president of the most powerful country in the world—the country thought of as the most advanced democracy—with the help of a rogue FBI Director and the Russian government and now America is on the brink of being rolled backwards at the speed of light, to pre Civil Rights Movement days.

We share joy and triumph and hope, but grief is the most isolating experience. A predominant fear among many has been that with time grief will heal and the outrage will fade. Don't let this be the new normal has been a common theme.

This being Donald Trump's ignorance, stupidity, racism, bigotry and sexism, and culture of covert and overt white supremacy, promotion of inequality, discrimination against women, minorities and Muslims, exploitation of people and the earth's resources, the many being sacrificed to the few, rolling back clean energy, embracing policies that will enrich the few, destroy the poor, erode the middle class again and accelerate climate change.

How could what Trump personifies, and has exposed as the underbelly of our lovely Western culture, ever become a new standard for what's acceptable, the new normal? Because we do become inured unless we make a conscious choice not to be. But a huge body of people have already made that choice to fight for and preserve a coherent world for everybody. Including some powerful legislators and media organisations who aren't allowing Trump to become the new normal. As an example, the New York Times, which made a decisive switch from sitting on the fence to condemning Trump and endorsing Hillary Clinton during the primaries, actually increased its digital readership by 21% in the third quarter of 2016.

The investigation into Trump's charity foundation continues and he's powerless to stop it. Democrats in the Senate are delaying their acceptance of eight of Trump's cabinet picks while they call for more information, tax returns, and ethics investigations. They can't block the posts because they don't have the votes but they can delay and jam up the process. And that's what they're doing.

In North Carolina, a judge delayed the law overhauling the elections panel, a law that would severely restrict the powers of the soon-to-be Democrat Governor.

It's obvious from Trump's body language and his utter inarticulacy when questioned on matters of state that he's totally out of his depth and very uncomfortable with the heavy investigative spotlight on him and his family. Whatever he's hiding by not releasing his tax returns will come out in the wash somewhere.

He's been horribly—or wonderfully—humiliated by so many celebrities refusing to perform for his inauguration, and by the recent defection of performers in two of the groups that he did manage to secure, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Rockettes. Trump's response was to say that he'll have a protracted inauguration day parade and he'll only attend three balls (Obama attended eleven), because he wants to get to work immediately. The notion of Trump working is ludicrous; all he's doing is showing his vulnerability.

His transition team is a shambles, his tweeting is still out of control and now he's intimating that the Intelligence report on Russia's hacking prior to the election was inadequate. Even GOP politicians who have weak-mindedly endorsed him are putting boundaries down. So he'll be up against his own team as president.

Trump never wanted this job, but when he 'won' the election he obviously thought he could carry on lying, cheating and exploiting. Now that he and his posse of children are waking up to reality they're scrabbling around like crazy.

Trouble is, he's made a lot of very smart, very informed people very angry. And they have the law on their side. It's ironic. Trump craves constant approbation and to be able to do whatever he wants, and he only ran for president to pump up his profile so he could expand his businesses. Now he is being excoriated every day by the press, he's despised by millions in America and around the world; he's in a job that's virtual straitjacket for somebody like him; his charity foundation is under investigation; and he's having to divest!

Poetic justice. Speaking to Seth Meyers, Michael Moore predicted Trump will find a way to quit the presidency before the inauguration. I'm half inclined to agree with him but even if that happens, the battle has just begun. 

"Collectively we come together and we say, you know, we're going to preserve some things that last beyond our individual lives, that we're going to pass that on. And we have to do it together. You know, that is hopefully part of what is best about our government. And so every once in a while we need the ability to step back from our personal wants and project something finer and better for future generations." 

Barack Obama said this in 2010. He was in Yellowstone talking about the preservation of State Parks, but his words apply to preserving anything important. Throughout history, when decency and democratic legitimacy have been under threat, people with integrity have instinctively come together and fight, and it's happening now. A force like this might isn't bully-driven so it might not seem powerful at first, but it gathers momentum that's unassailable and it sustains itself until it succeeds, no matter how long that takes.

Liberals and Democrats are already looking to 2018. If they can reach Democrat voters for those mid-terms, they could regain control of Congress because all 435 House seats, and 33 out of 100 Senate seats are up for grabs. And to illustrate the interest, if you Google "what congressional…" the sentence completes as "seats are up for reelection in 2018". With 27 million search results.

Enjoy your power while you have it, Republicans. It's not going to last very long.

Dark Days As US Democracy Sinks Into The Swamp

Photo and Art by Jennifer Stewart

It’s nearly a month since the world feel apart for me and millions like me in a presidential election of allegedly the greatest democracy on earth.

Where the odds stacked against Hillary Clinton went from massive double standards, Russian interference and Julian Assange  gimmicks— is there any difference? — to an FBI director, to fake news, to a populace that sucks up any misinformation so long as it creates a justification for their bigotry, sexism, racism, you name it, to GOP policies skewed towards disenfranchising minorities.

In hindsight, it seems clear that Clinton never stood a chance of winning playing by the rules. Although those recounts are happening...

Every day I read of new travesties, and watch how the liberal media also sinks deeper and deeper into the swamp, either selectively reporting or flat out misconstruing what’s been said by the president-elect and his crew. Normalizing him and them in ways that make a mockery of the word liberal.

Every day I scour that media, desperately searching for the clarion call, for the voice of pure outrage. I seldom find it.

I think we’ve been here before. How long did it take the liberal media to get off the fence and take a stand to unequivocally endorse Hillary Clinton? I and I presume all NYT subscribers received an email asking what we wanted to read. My response was that I wanted to see unequivocal condemnation of Trump and for the NYT to be the leader in it. I presume I was one of many, because the NYT gave us what we wanted. Too late to be the leader of the liberal media, though. And it was too little too late to save the election.

Then as soon as the election results were called, Hillary Clinton disappeared off everybody’s radar and every single damn headline was about the president-elect. But was it, is it, real investigative reporting? Not all of it, no. Some of it was bland comment often, or writing about him as if he was a normal human being, or taking what he or one of his right wing minions said out of context.

It’s all very civilized. The excuse I hear everywhere is that the liberal media is facing extinction and can’t afford real investigative journalism.

I don’t buy it. Real investigation into what was wrong with this election, passionate reporting and continued unequivocal condemnation of Trump would draw readers, including Trump supporters.

Because it’s dramatic and that’s what people lust for. Charles M. Blow, NYT columnist, dashed off a piece in response to Trump’s meeting with the NYT, entitled “No Trump, We Can’t Just Get Along”. It’s outright condemnatory of Trump and received 2310 comments, which collectively got about 80,000 likes.

Every waking moment I have to fight against a wave of helplessness and hopelessness that washes over me as the US moves inexorably towards a government characterized by the worst in humanity, led back to pre Civil Rights Movement days by a con-man who has the animal instincts of a serial predator but no real intelligence, no intellectual capacity.

A fool utterly devoid of ethic. So pathetically needy that anybody can suck up to him and he’ll give them a position of power.

These are dark days.

Fifty Years After the Civil Rights Era, Evil Prevails Again

Civil rights demonstrator attacked by a police dog on May 3, 1963, in Birmingham, Alabama

Stephanie McCurry, Professor of History at Columbia University, taught History of the Slave South on Coursera a few years ago. In her conclusion she said: 

"The Confederate States of America was transformed by war, and the Confederate political project was undone … when the 4 million African Americans born enslaved in the United States seized the opening history offered.

When they rose on the plantations. When they grabbed up their children and poured into Union lines. When they insisted that the Union reformulate policy to account for their historic mission of emancipation. When men, women, and children alike, risked all to turn the war in the right direction. When they made slaveholders ask for the first time, what do the slaves want? …

And given the pro slavery, white supremacist and anti democratic aspirations of that nation, there was a certain justice, I think, in that."   

A certain justice, but not enough to exorcise the racism ingrained in so many that less than 50 years after the Civil Rights era, white supremacists are on the ascendancy again and the alt-right has dictated the next American president, who is now choosing racists, bigots and warmongers for his crew. Salon.com has an excellent piece on Senator Sessions, Trump's choice for AG. And as Rep. Luis V. Gutiérrez (D-IL) said of him:

"If you have nostalgia for the days when blacks kept quiet, gays were in the closet, immigrants were invisible and women stayed in the kitchen, Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions is your man. No Senator has fought harder against the hopes and aspirations of Latinos, immigrants, and people of color than Sen. Sessions... He ran for the Senate because he was deemed by the Senate Judiciary Committee as too racist to serve as a federal judge. He is the kind of person who will set back law enforcement, civil rights, the courts, and increase America’s mass incarceration industry and erase 50 years of progress."

Divisions in American society run terribly deep, and hard as people have tried to believe that America, with all its diversity is at heart homogeneous in spirit, it's wishful thinking, and usually on the part of liberals.

Abusers, in politics and even in relationships, get away with a lot as their generous-spirited victims give them chance after chance after chance, desperately holding onto the belief that everybody is intrinsically good if you just give them understanding. Finally there comes a point when the victims face reality. Understanding sometimes does nothing more than enable more abuse.

And so abusive spouses face divorce, abusive friends find themselves friendless, revolutions get rid of dictators. But still, even as history teaches us at a personal and societal level that early warning signals, if ignored, always lead to dangerous eruptions, liberals try to make peace with bigots and racists in the name of democracy and inclusiveness. But liberalism is intrinsically about ensuring that everybody has equal rights. When those who oppose that idea act out their beliefs and in doing so strip others of their rights, they give up some of their own. Basic human rights come with moral accountability. 

It's how society operates and stays moderately functional. So when millions of people vote in a deeply racist demagogue who has whipped up hatred and fomented intolerance until manifestations of it start returning America to pre-Civil Rights days, the last thing liberals need is to try and make peace with those voters.

The alt-right rationale is that their anger has its roots in being excluded. Have they been excluded? No they haven't. They got a superlative president who, more than any Republican president before him, truly believed in his heart of hearts that his presidential responsibility was to everybody, not just those who voted for him. But he wasn't white and those conservatives voted in a GOP Congress who made it impossible for the president to help them in the way that he wanted to.

So no, I don't buy the idea that middle America has been excluded. Middle America has excluded itself. If you want to be part of the human race dialogue and you want to benefit from others' desire for equality, you have to want it yourself and fight against that which thwarts it, not vote it into office.

When good people do nothing, evil prevails. Trying to make friends with supporters of Donald Trump is the equivalent of doing nothing. And we need to face it; evil is prevailing right now. It's not something that might happen next month or next week. It's happening now. And anybody who does anything other than help to strengthen Democrats in this time of crisis is adding to the problem.

Lest We Forget, Racism Isn't Over in the US

Bill Hudson's photo (courtesy Wiki), shot in Birmingham on May 3 1963, shows Parker High School student Walter Gadsden being restrained by a white police officer so the dog could lunge at his stomach.

There’s been a lot of talk since Barack Obama was elected that racism is over in the US. The Civil Rights Movement was successful; everybody’s equal now and responsible for making their own lives work; poverty is a choice. Right.

Lest We Forget. Originally it was from Recessional, a poem by Rudyard Kipling entreating God to save Brits from their propensity to over-celebrate their power and lapse into indulgence and profanity. It refers to Christ’s alleged sacrifice on the cross. As a child I associated it with Hitler’s slaughter of 6 million Jews. But name any atrocity, really, at a personal or societal level.

Powerful phrase, that, Lest We Forget. The thing is, we do forget, all the time. It’s inconvenient to remember. Then every now and then the consequences of what we don’t want to acknowledge explode in our faces.

The following passages are from the Justice Department Report on their investigation into the Ferguson Police Department. Italics are mine.

…We have discovered evidence of racial bias in emails sent by Ferguson officials, all of whom are current employees, almost without exception through their official City of Ferguson email accounts, and apparently sent during work hours [between] several police and court supervisors, including FPD supervisors and commanders. The following emails are illustrative:

1. A November 2008 email stated that President Barack Obama would not be President for very long because “what black man holds a steady job for four years.”
2. A March 2010 email mocked African Americans through speech and familial stereotypes, using a story involving child support. One line from the email read: “I be so glad that dis be my last child support payment! Month after month, year after year, all dose payments!”
3. An April 2011 email depicted President Barack Obama as a chimpanzee.
4. A May 2011 email stated: “An African-American woman in New Orleans was admitted into the hospital for a pregnancy termination. Two weeks later she received a check for $5,000. She phoned the hospital to ask who it was from. The hospital said, ‘Crimestoppers.’”
5. A June 2011 email described a man seeking to obtain “welfare” for his dogs because they are “mixed in color, unemployed, lazy, can’t speak English and have no frigging clue who their Daddies are.”
6. An October 2011 email included a photo of a bare-chested group of dancing women, apparently in Africa, with the caption, “Michelle Obama’s High School Reunion.”
7. A December 2011 email included jokes that are based on offensive stereotypes about Muslims.

[There were many others. The senders were not reported or disciplined and the emails were usually forwarded along to others.]

…African Americans experience disparate impact in nearly every aspect of Ferguson’s law enforcement system. Despite making up 67% of the population, [they] accounted for 85% of FPD’s traffic stops, 90% of FPD’s citations, and 93% of FPD’s arrests from 2012 to 2014.

While the record demonstrates a pattern of stops that are improper from the beginning, it also exposes encounters that start as constitutionally defensible but quickly cross the line. For example, in the summer of 2012, an officer detained a 32-year-old African-American man who was sitting in his car cooling off after playing basketball. The officer arguably had grounds to stop and question the man, since his windows appeared more deeply tinted than permitted under Ferguson’s code.

Without cause, the officer went on to accuse the man of being a pedophile, prohibit the man from using his cell phone, order the man out of his car for a pat-down despite having no reason to believe he was armed, and ask to search his car.

When the man refused, citing his constitutional rights, the officer reportedly pointed a gun at his head, and arrested him. The officer charged the man with eight different counts, including making a false declaration for initially providing the short form of his first name (e.g., “Mike” instead of “Michael”) and an address that, although legitimate, differed from the one on his license. The officer also charged the man both with having an expired operator’s license, and with having no operator’s license in possession.

The man told us he lost his job as a contractor with the federal government as a result of the charges…

…Officers command dogs to apprehend by biting even when multiple officers are present. They make no attempt to slow situations down, creating time to resolve the situation with lesser force. They appear to use canines not to counter a physical threat but to inflict punishment.

They act as if every offender has a gun, justifying their decisions based on what might be possible rather than what the facts indicate is likely. Overall, FPD officers’ use of canines reflects a culture in which officers choose not to use the skills and tactics that could resolve a situation without injuries, and instead deploy tools and methods that are almost guaranteed to produce an injury of some type …

Then there’s the University of Oklahoma’s SAE frat house chant recently captured on video: “There will never be a n****r SAE, you can hang them from a tree but they will never sign with me. There will never be a n****r SAE.”

Sure, racism is a thing of the past in America.