Category Archives: Civic virtue

Kristof is right: Don’t demean Trump voters

I didn’t see this Nicholas Kristof column until sometime after it ran at the end of August. I heard about it later, when he did a voice piece on NYT Audio speaking back to readers who had given him unmitigated grief for the column, headlined “Here’s Why We Shouldn’t Demean Trump Voters.”

Nicholas Kristof

You should be able to read it at that link, but if you’re too much of a slacker, I’ll tell you it was a good piece, and Kristof is completely right.

The piece starts with a quote from Bill Clinton speaking at the Democratic National Convention:

“We’ve seen more than one election slip away from us when we thought it couldn’t happen, when people got distracted by phony issues or overconfident…. ”

“I urge you to meet people where they are,” said Clinton, who knows something about winning votes outside of solid blue states. “I urge you not to demean them, but not to pretend you don’t disagree with them if you do. Treat them with respect — just the way you’d like them to treat you.”…

Well, that’s pretty basic, and no one who follows any of the multiple moral codes on this planet that share a version of the Golden Rule should have an argument with it at all. But I know that some will, and they will express themselves vehemently. Including some of y’all — and me.

I know Kristof is right, and I resolve before God and all of you to act accordingly. But I fear I will fail, as I often have before.

The reason, of course, is that I’ve never been able to think of a single reason to support Trump that doesn’t fit into one of two ugly categories. I’ve often raised the question, Which is it? Is Trump evil? Or just stupid? All, or at least most, of the halfway believeable excuses for backing him seem to fit in one of those categories. To overlook the legion of shocking problems with the man, it seems you must be as bent on destroying all the best things about this country I love, or just completely insensible to all evidence, and incapable of reaching a rational conclusion.

Of course, in my struggle to show the love I owe to every brother and sister on the planet, and my frequent failure to do so, I reveal my own evil, and my own stupidity.

I’m probably going to get myself in trouble with the NYT copyright lawyers (even though I’m strongly urging you to read the original, and even subscribe), but here are some excerpts from the Kristof piece:

By all means denounce Trump, but don’t stereotype and belittle the nearly half of Americans who have sided with him….

Since I live in a rural area, many of my old friends are Trump supporters. One, a good and generous woman, backs Trump because she feels betrayed by the Democratic and Republican political establishments, and she has a point. When factories closed and good union jobs left the area, she ended up homeless and addicted; four members of her extended family killed themselves and she once put a gun to her own head. So when a demagogue like Trump speaks to her pain and promises to bring factories back, of course her heart leaps.

Then her resolve strengthens when she hears liberals mock her faith — it was an evangelical church that helped her overcome homelessness — or deride her as “deplorable.”…

Since the Obama presidency, Democrats have increasingly become the party of the educated, and the upshot has often been a whiff of condescension toward working-class voters, especially toward voters of faith. And in a country where 74 percent of Americans report a belief in God, according to Gallup, and only 38 percent over the age of 25 have a four-year college degree, condescension is a losing strategy.

Michael Sandel, the eminent Harvard philosopher, condemns the scorn for people with less education as “the last acceptable prejudice” in America. He’s right…

And so forth. He concludes:

Whatever our politics, Trump brings out the worst in all of us. He nurtures hate on his side that we mirror.

So let’s take a deep breath, summon F.D.R.’s empathy for the forgotten man, follow Clinton’s advice — and, for the sake of winning elections as well as of civility, remember that the best way to get others to listen to us is to first listen to them.

Of course, that requires “them” being willing to listen to us, or even talk to us. Trump’s great triumph is in splitting us further apart. In a way, it’s his whole strategy. An America in which people who disagree speak and listen to each other is the America I grew up in — a place that would laugh a man like Trump right off the stage as he makes promises to hurting people that he has no intention of keeping.

I know how hard all this is for all of us, but we must not give in to Trump’s strategy. We need more of what happened in my yard several weeks ago — a neighbor who is super-involved in local GOP politics and has a Trump sign in his yard (I think — it’s awkwardly placed at the border of his yard and the one next door) came over and struck up a friendly conversation with my wife and me, even though he knew people close to him would think him crazy for doing so.

I appreciated it. We had a very amicable exchange of views, and have had another such talk since then.

It was really kind of wonderful. We all need to have more such talks. And I feel obliged to take the next step myself. And I know how. I used to have a lot of such conversations. It’s just been awfully hard lately…

DeMarco: Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

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The Op-Ed Page

No, this isn’t a picture of Paul DeMarco. It’s Mr. Rogers. But they are alike in some important ways…

By Paul V. DeMarco
Guest Columnist

When our family moved to Marion in 1993, we knew very little about the place. We had visited to interview for what would become my first job, but had little time to search for a home. Without the benefit of internet browsing, we ended up renting a house we had only seen in a video (shot with an old-fashioned video camera). Once we moved in, we discovered that our neighborhood was all white.

This was, of course, not unexpected. Many neighborhoods in our country remain homogeneous. I never saw a black person in the blue-collar neighborhood in Charleston where I grew up.

But I didn’t choose the neighborhood where I grew up. I had chosen, albeit hastily, this one. Not that we had many other choices. Few small towns have neighborhoods that reflect the racial and economic diversity of the population at large. Many towns still have recognizable dividing lines. In some places it is the railroad tracks. In Marion, it is one of the main thoroughfares, Liberty Street, that marks the invisible line, once strictly enforced, between the black and white sides of town.

My hope when we moved in was that the neighborhood would grow more diverse over time, and that hope has been realized. Slowly, more and more black neighbors have moved in. In 2018, a retired black woman bought the house across the street from us. She is a good neighbor. We see each other in our front yards and speak. We enjoy looking at each other’s flowers.

During her first Christmas season, I carried over a small container of goodies, something we have done every Christmas for our closest neighbors. A few days later, as the sun was setting on Christmas Eve, she came to our front door and reciprocated. As she handed us her gift, she said, “Thank you for accepting me into the neighborhood.”

I think often of those eight words and all they say about American society. It is a sentence foreign to me. It would never occur to me that my neighbors might not accept me. But this was her first time as a homeowner, coming back South after a career in the Northeast. She knew our nation’s history – redlining, white flight, resistance to blacks moving into all-white spaces (exemplified most violently in 1951 in Cicero, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago). She understood that she was a pioneer in our white neighborhood. She knew, in a way that I could never know, the fear of being ignored, rejected, or despised because of who she was.

It also was a personal affirmation for my wife and me. We had done nothing special. We had treated her like any other neighbor – usually a brief greeting and a smile, sometimes walking across the street for a longer chat on a Saturday morning, watching the house and taking the mail when the other was away. But those mundane kindnesses were magnified to her in a way I did not recognize until she visited us that Christmas Eve.

I still have much to learn, as was demonstrated at her housewarming the next spring. She was very excited to have her neighbors, friends, and family share her joy as a homeowner. She worked for months redecorating and preparing. She put in an above-ground pool in the backyard. Finally, the day came. Upon arriving, every guest was invited inside for a tour. Then we congregated in the garage, and the inevitable happened. All her white neighbors were gathered in one corner, while her friends and family were in the other.

Her sister told me clandestinely that her birthday was in a few days and that they had, unbeknownst to her, bought a cake and were about to present it to her. Here was my moment, I thought. I would unite us all in song by leading “Happy Birthday!” But as the cake arrived and I opened my mouth to sing, after the first syllable I discovered that the black partygoers were singing a different “Happy Birthday.” I learned that day that there is another version of “Happy Birthday” that was written in 1980 by Stevie Wonder to promote adoption of the MLK holiday. The chorus of Wonder’s song is a marvelous, up-tempo tune, much more melodic and fun than the dirge that I was accustomed to singing.

It was painful to grasp that this song, an important part of black social life for decades, was something about which I was ignorant. But the reason was obvious. I’d never had a black neighbor or close black friend. So I was never invited to any birthday parties where that version would be sung.

In the five years since the housewarming, the neighborhood has continued to diversify. From my side yard, I can now see three other homes owned by black or mixed families. Seeing black neighbors walking past our home is no longer a rarity.

Bit by bit, the kind of diversification that my neighborhood is undergoing could lead to a society that is, well, more neighborly. If we live near people who look different from the way we do, we will know them as human beings. We will be better equipped to resist relying on caricatures of them drawn by those politicians and media whose livelihoods depend on us fearing each other. I’m confident that if Mr. Rogers could visit my neighborhood, he would be cheered by the changes.

A version of this column appeared in the June 20^th edition of the Post and Courier-Pee Dee.

Can ‘baby steps’ keep guns from killing babies?

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By Don Holloway via Wikimedia Commons

As y’all know, I seldom write about gun control. That’s because I have long seen the problem as hopeless. We have another mass killing, and we talk about various legislative proposals — background checks, red flag laws, whatever — and the “remedies” seem like nothing compared to what they’re up against.

What they are up against is a number: 400 million. That’s how many guns we have in this country in private hands. We have 329.5 million people, and 400 million guns. As long as that is the case, anybody who is really set on getting his hands on a gun — including the monsters who have the urge to go shoot up a school — will be able to get one. It’s an economic problem: Too many lunatics chasing too many guns.

And of course, reducing the number of guns is just the most extreme, most politically impossible gun control measure of all. It’s the “horrible” thing that the most extreme defenders of the bloody status quo raise to argue against even discussing doing anything about the problem: They want to take our guns!

Of course, sensible people who want to do something always immediately say, Oh no! We don’t want to do that! as they trot out another idea for incremental change. Another idea that, in my view, will do nothing to prevent something like what happened in Uvalde, Texas.

But I’d love it if y’all could convince me I’m wrong, because God knows we’ve got to do something. And it seems the place to start would be at a point that lies somewhere in the vicinity of being politically possible.

Nicholas Kristof has tried to convince me a couple of times lately. Remember how I mentioned running across a column from him in another recent post? Well, that column was headlined “These Gun Reforms Could Save 15,000 Lives. We Can Achieve Them.” A headline like that sort of demands that a pessimist like me listen to what he has to say. Because while we might not save everybody, it would be profoundly worthwhile to save 15,000 lives. Which would be about a third of annual gun deaths.

After I saw that, I listened to a Kara Swisher podcast in which her guests were Kristof and another guy named Frank Smyth. I wasn’t familiar with Smyth — a gun enthusiast who isn’t afraid of gun control, and author of The N.R.A.: the Unauthorized History — but he seemed to be a pessimist along the same lines as me:

There’s no — I don’t see any hope for gun reform now despite this disgusting shooting and these series of shootings and the racist shootings and other shootings by incels and others by different motivations, but the common denominator is easy access to guns….

Kristof disagreed. He thinks taking what Smyth called “baby steps” is worthwhile:

I would say that when you’re already 400 million guns out there, then simply dealing with new guns has limited effect, but you were critiquing baby steps. And I just wanted to speak in favor of baby steps.

I think of a model for — whenever I write about gun policy, then people — I get hostile emails. People say, look, cars kill about as many Americans each year as guns do, and you don’t ban cars. No, but cars are a great example of the public health approach that we should be taking with firearms, and since 1921, we’ve managed to reduce the fatality rate per 100 million miles driven with motor vehicles by more than 90 percent. And it was no one thing. It was a whole series of baby steps. It was — [“seatbelts,” Kara Swisher interrupts to say, before Kristof resumes] — It was airbags. It was padded dashboards. It was divided highways, better lighting. It was roundabouts rather than left turns, and the graduated driver’s license, crackdowns on drunk driving. And I think in the same way that there are baby steps in the world of firearms that they’re not going to be transformative overnight, but I think they are politically feasible. And I think they would save lives and, perhaps, turn the trajectory around…

That makes a great deal of sense to me. Kristof almost always does. Which is why I hope he’ll soon be back at the NYT on a regular basis.

Kristof is very consistently what I strive and too often fail to be.

All my life, I’ve believed in reasoning with people, that’s it’s something that makes a difference. It’s a belief that our system is based upon here in this country. And too few people believe in it now, which is why the system is falling apart.

This belief is what undergirded my newspaper career, and it’s what this blog is about. It’s about having a place where people with different views can discuss issues in a civil and constructive manner. It’s been an uphill battle making that happen since I started blogging 17 years ago, and it’s gotten worse lately.

But I’m going to keep trying. Nicholas Kristof keeps trying, even after he was barred from running for office after he gave up a spectacularly successful career in order to do so. He’s a guy who says things like this:

This will be painful for many of my fellow liberals, but I suggest that we work harder to engage centrists, talk about “gun safety” rather than “gun control,” and jump into the weeds. Social scientists suggest “complexifying” an issue to reduce polarization, and, sure enough, I find that I can (sometimes) have productive conversations with gun enthusiasts if we focus on technocratic details….

A guy like that is worth listening to, worth engaging with. And thanks to him, I’m going to try to be more optimistic on gun control. Saving a third of the people who die unnecessarily due to guns in this country is a worthwhile objective. Saving just one of those children who were murdered the other day would absolutely have been worthwhile.

So I’m willing to try. How about you? As Kristof says in his column:

The truth is that we’re not going to ban guns in the United States any more than we ban alcohol, motorcycles, hunting knives, cigarettes or other products that can be deadly. Screaming, maximalist fights about “gun control” versus the “Second Amendment” have created a political stalemate as we continue to lose 45,000 lives a year to guns. That’s 123 lives lost a day.

This does not happen in other countries. Japan typically loses a single-digit number of people to gun murders in a year; we lost twice that in a single school on Tuesday…

So let’s do something…

Changes for the coming primary

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Yes, there’s a primary in June.

And our friend Lynn has been out there working hard to try to help us participate in it more fully, as citizens should do.

So I thought I’d share this release she sent out today:

MDW SC Update: Big Changes for June Primaries

The State Election Commission (SEC) has announced Act 165 changes in place for June primaries at https://www.scvotes.gov/early-voting-now-effect-june-primaries. Changes have not been made consistently throughout the SEC website, so this page should be considered accurate when there are conflicts within www.scvotes.gov or with county websites. Everyone is doubtless scrambling to make changes.

The major changes in in-person voters affecting voters now:

Excused absentee in-person voting is no longer authorized in SC law.

No-excuse in-person voting will begin on Tuesday, May 31 and continue through Friday, June 10. Early voting locations will be closed Saturday and Sunday, June 4-5.

Early voting locations will include county election offices. Additional locations will be posted by all counties to www.scvotes.govby May 24.

Early voting for June Runoffs will be held Wednesday, June 22 through Friday, June 24, at the same hours and locations as the primaries.

Excused absentee voting by mail will be open to all voters with disabilities, those 65 or over, members of the Armed Forces and their families residing with them, and voters admitted to the hospital on an emergency basis within four days of election day.

Others who may vote by mail are those who are unable to vote in person during both the two-week early in-person voting period and election day due to employment, caretaking responsibilities, incarceration, or other absence from the county of primary residence.

SEC indicates that new witness requirements for mail absentee ballots will not go into effect until the General Election in November. (Ballot materials are doubtless already at the printers.)

In November, and even now, we encourage voters who can do so to use the in-person early voting option, which presents far fewer opportunities for technical defects in applications or ballots, or just slow USPS, to lead to an inability to vote or a ballot that isn’t counted. (Legislators declined to require notice-and-cure so that voters could correct technical defects.)

Please read the SCVotes announcement at https://www.scvotes.gov/early-voting-now-effect-june-primariesfor more details.

Anyone with questions about other provisions of the new legislation should consult the final version of Act 165 at https://www.scstatehouse.gov/sess124_2021-2022/bills/108.htm.

Also, stay tuned for SEC announcements regarding public input into regulations to be developed under the new law. The new law requires regulations that will dictate consistency between county election offices and also regulate our organizations involved in voter services. It is a very important provision of South Carolina law that regulations must be developed with public input!

Lynn Shuler Teague
VP for Issues and Action, LWVSC

How to deal with Omicron? It’s easy as one, two, three

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So it sounds like you and the experts you talked to are saying that the answer to preventing variants like omicron and enduring them is not severe travel restrictions. It’s just a lot more vaccinations.

We know what works. It’s vaccination, it’s masks, it’s social distancing, and probably not travel restrictions.

— Exchange between host Michael Barbaro and reporter Apoorva Mandavilli on The Daily

I’m still trying to catch up on things enough to resume blogging, but I just thought I’d take a moment to weigh in on Omicron. There’s a lot about it we won’t know for weeks, until we see just what it does to us and our world.

There are reasons to be concerned, of course. As this episode of The Daily noted earlier this week, there are three principle questions we ask when a new COVID variant emerges:

How contagious is it?
How severe is it? (Will it lead to more hospitalizations, and deaths?)
Will the vaccines protect us from it?

The initial analysis of the variant indicates it has properties that cause concern in all three of those areas — more than Delta did back during the summer.

But we just won’t know for a while, until we see what happens outside the laboratory.

In the meantime, though, we know how to reduce the risk to our neighbors and ourselves:

Get vaccinated, if for some unimaginable reason you haven’t already done so.
Wear a mask around other people.
Avoid other people. Keep your distance. For God’s sake don’t go out into crowds unless it cannot be avoided.

All of these things make it less likely that you will pick up the virus and pass it onto others. Which reduces the chances for Omicron or any other variant, or any other infectious disease, to spread, to reproduce, to evolve. If everyone does these things, the pandemic burns itself out sooner rather than later.

In other words, act like a grownup. Be a responsible citizen. It’s really not that hard.

League keeps striving to Make Democracy Work

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Our friend Lynn Teague included me on the email when she sent out this League of Women Voters newsletter, and I thought I’d share it with y’all, since this stuff is much in the news.

As Lynn explained…

This MDW Update is one in a series from the League of Women Voters of South Carolina on legislation within the core area of League interest — “Making Democracy Work” through accountable and transparent government. It was posted following announcement of a Senate subcommittee meeting that will address eight bills related to elections and voting.

Two bills are mentioned in this update without explanation because they were covered in an earlier post. They are discussed at https://my.lwv.org/sites/default/files/mdw_update_6.pdf

Here ya go:

Making Democracy Work in SC: Election Bills Scheduled for March 16 in Senate, Adding New Bills to Mix

Things are moving fast. The Senate has scheduled a subcommittee meeting on a group of election-related bills for Tuesday, March 16, following Senate adjournment. Subcommittee members are senators Campsen (chair), Hutto, Young, McLeod, Garrett.

The bills are as follows:

113 (Absentee Ballots)
S. 174 (Independent Expenditure Committee)
S. 187 (Interest on Campaign Account)
S. 236 (Municipal Precinct Pooling from 500 to 3000 Voters)
S. 499 (S.C. Election Commission Restructuring Act)
H. 3262 (3rdParty Candidates Filing Fee; Certification Fee
H. 3263 (Candidate Primary Protests to State Executive Committee)

3264 (Newspaper Ad Requirement for County Conventions)

Note that H.3444 is not listed for consideration. That is excellent news. The last three bills that are listed are basically partisan housekeeping. The League is not addressing those. All of the bills originating in the Senate are of interest.

S.499 (https://www.scstatehouse.gov/billsearch.php)

We discussed this bill earlier today in the previous update. The League supports it as a reasonable measure to broaden input into appointment of the SEC Director through Senate advice and consent.

S.113 (https://www.scstatehouse.gov/billsearch.php?billnumbers=113)

South Carolina’s procedures to vote absentee by mail are more convoluted than necessary to maintain election security. They even seem to have confused the General Assembly, as the SEC found when trying to interpret special provisions for 2020 elections during the pandemic. This bill perpetuates existing problems and adds a few new ones. It should be possible to file a request for an application to vote absentee by mail (not the actual ballot) on-line. Instead, one can fill out the form on-line, but must then print the form out and deliver it in person or by mail. This confuses voters and is at best an additional impediment for the many voters who can access the online webpages but do not own printers to produce a hard copy to mail or deliver in person. Also, S. 113 would amend §7-15-385(B)(3) to provide that the only legal methods of returning ballots are by mail or by personal delivery, either by the voter or by a member of the applicant’s immediate family. The bill therefore eliminates the return of ballots by authorized persons who are not family members. This will be an obstacle for homebound persons who rely on unrelated caretakers, either in their homes or in group residencies. Finally, in stating that only the specified means of ballot return are permitted, S. 113 would prevent the use of ballot boxes in secure locations for return of ballots, which have been used successfully in South Carolina’s counties.

174 (https://www.scstatehouse.gov/billsearch.php)

This bill is an attempt to address the longstanding deficiencies regarding dark money disclosures in South Carolina, in this case for groups not organized for the primary purpose of influencing elections. The League supports addressing this serious problem. We note that federal court decisions have clarified this to some extent in recent years and has established that it is not a restriction on free speech to require basic disclosures. However, this bill will face strong opposition.

187 (https://www.scstatehouse.gov/sess124_2021-2022/bills/187.htm)

187 would greatly assist in the transparency of campaign bank accounts and at the same time help to fund more consistent oversight of campaign filings.

236 (https://www.scstatehouse.gov/billsearch.php)

For purposes of municipal elections only, this bill would increase the number of voters that must have their own voting place from 500 to 3000. It also would increase the permissible distance of voters from a pooled municipal polling place from three to five miles. This could present significant obstacles for voters without easy access to transportation. Turnout is usually low in local government elections, but there remains an increased potential for long lines and delays, which can make voting difficult or impossible for those with work and family obligations.

Lynn Shuler Teague
VP for Issues and Action, LWVSC

The kids aren’t getting smarter — or any more responsible

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A friend sent me this picture a little while ago. I immediately asked whether she was still there, and could get me another shot without that car in the way.

She said it wasn’t hers; she had gotten it from a Tweet:

☹️ pic.twitter.com/0Ry5aEsoHF

— Lee Snelgrove (@leesnelgrove) February 24, 2021

I checked with the guy who posted it, and he said he took the picture at about 3:30 p.m. today.

That’s the same spot pictured in this previous post, at 5:48 p.m. on Sept. 9.

The earlier shot was less… impressive, if that’s the word you want to use.

It almost seems irrelevant to ask, but how many masks do you see? No, I don’t see any, either.

What does one say about this kind of indiscriminate, homicidal behavior?

I dunno. Here’s what Chris Trainor of The State had to say:

Not sure what else to say. The city has written hundreds and hundreds of mask tickets. There have been numerous news and TV stories. For months. They just don't give a shit.

— Chris Trainor (@ChrisTrainorSC) February 24, 2021

Oh, one more thing: I don’t think they’re waiting to get into Subway. It’s about the bar next door. But that’s just a guess on my part, based on what I was told the last time. I asked Lee Snelgrove, and he didn’t know — he was just riding by…

Bruni on the one word for Biden so far: ‘generous’

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Just a little something to feel good about…

I enjoyed Frank Bruni’s e-newsletter this week, particularly since I hadn’t seen one lately — he’d been away writing a book or some such. I hope he won’t mind if I quote from it fairly extensively. The email was headlined, “The one word that defines Biden’s presidency so far.”

An excerpt:

How good it feels to write that! President Joe Biden. We needed a change, and now we have it, and the rightness of this particular one was captured not just in his excellent inauguration speech but also in other words and gestures of his in the hours just before and after that address.

I’ll focus on three unscripted sentences shortly after 5 p.m., when a small group of journalists were on hand for his signing of several executive orders in the Oval Office. One of them asked about the content of a letter that President Donald Trump — who actually followed tradition in this instance — left Biden. There’d been doubt that Trump would do so.

“The president wrote a very generous letter,” Biden said. “Because it was private, I will not talk about it until I talk to him. But it was generous.”

Generous. The word grabbed me, and not because Biden used it twice.

For starters, “generous” perfectly describes Biden’s response to the question he was asked.

He could simply have declined to characterize the letter, citing etiquette and discretion. He certainly wasn’t under any obligation to compliment and essentially thank Trump, not after Trump refused to accept the legitimacy of Biden’s election, spread conspiracy theories and fomented violence. Trump was intent on making Biden’s transition into the presidency as rocky as possible and bequeathing him a country almost impossible to govern.

Biden nonetheless went out of his way to be big. To be kind. He placed Trump, of all people, in proximity to “generous,” when our former president (it feels good to write that phrase, too!) is anything but.

Ever since Election Day, Biden hasn’t merely been urging civility. He’s been modeling it, despite a magnitude of ugliness and absurdity from Trump and his Republican enablers that has tested it at every turn. It’s a monumental feat of discipline. It’s the epitome of grace.

And it’s the definition of, well, generosity, which is as good a one-word summary of what America and Americans need right now as any other. We need it from our president. We need it from other political leaders. We need it most of all from ourselves….

It’s small things like that that, if we pay attention, can remind us of how blessed were are in this country now.

Others can talk about policies or programs or whatever interests them. For me, this sort of thing is why I wanted Joe Biden to be our president. Because we really, really need this…

Statement on the Inauguration from the McCain Institute

Now is the winter of their discontent… apparently

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Benedict Cumberbatch as Richard III in “The Hollow Crown: The Wars of The Roses.” We don’t need this…

This is a very dangerous time, a time no Americans have faced before.

A rough beast squats in the White House, refusing to move, even though it’s his time to slouch off (is it OK to mix references to Shakespeare and Yeats, or is that kind of like confusing metaphors?).

Almost half of the country (thank God less than half) voted for him, and has been brainwashed by him into utterly rejecting reality. And now he is rejecting his own rejection. We have never seen this before, ever. And we have never had so many people seemingly ready to accept something so profoundly, shockingly unAmerican. Now is the winter of their discontent, and they are acting as though they wish to bring the cold dark upon the whole country.

I referred to this in a tweet last night:

Up to 2016 I had the privilege and blessing of living in the United States of America. Now Donald Trump, who got the votes of almost half the country, is doing everything possible to transform us into the England of the Wars of the Roses. Not a promising prospect…

— Brad Warthen (@BradWarthen) November 11, 2020

Four years ago, I flirted with the idea that maybe — in a vain attempt to embrace their duty as Alexander Hamilton conceived it — presidential electors should refuse to vote for Trump.

I realized I was wrong — partly in response to comments some of you, such as Phillip Bush and Dave Crockett, posted to correct me — and did something you seldom see me do: I wrote and published a separate post saying I was wrong, and why. In other words, I did what we’re all waiting for Trump’s supporters (not so much the man himself; let’s not expect too much) to do — I came to my senses.

Aside from the guidance from some of you, I was influenced by the fact that I had been watching the second half of “The Hollow Crown,” a brilliant compilation of eight of Shakespeare’s history plays — from Richard II to Richard III — telling the horrible story of the Wars of the Roses.

I highly recommend the two series. After watching that second one (the three Henry VI plays and Richard III) I put the first series (Richard II through Henry V) on my Amazon gift list, and someone in my family was was kind enough to get it for me. You really should try watching them, particularly the bloody second batch.

That, and my more personal wanderings through history compiling my family tree, impressed me more than ever how fortunate we were to be living in the world’s oldest and most stable liberal democracy. As I wrote at the time:

For so much of human history, no one had much of a sense of loyalty to a country, much less to a system of laws. They couldn’t even be relied on to be loyal to a certain lord for long. Everybody was always looking for the main chance, ready to kill to gain advantage even temporarily.

Our 240-year history, our country of laws and not of men, is a blessed hiatus from all that. We may descend into barbarism yet — and yes, the election of a man who shows little respect for the rule of law is not a good omen — but so far the Constitution has held….

At least, it had held up to that point. But it hadn’t been tested yet the way it’s about to be tested…

“Plucking the Red and White Roses in the Old Temple Gardens,” by Henry Albert Payne

Should I go ahead and vote? Have you?

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A friend who voted today took this picture while waiting in the queue.

I’m starting to feel doubts. They may not affect my behavior, but I’m having them.

Y’all know how strongly I feel about the importance of turning out and voting with one’s neighbors (which is way communitarian), in person, on actual Election Day. It is to me a major, deeply meaningful ritual of life in America.

But… this is an extraordinary situation, is it not?

First, we have the most important election in my lifetime, one in which we will either save our republic by electing a normal, decent human being as our highest elected official, or drag the country — and the rest of the world, which has been holding its breath for four years waiting for us to fix this — down further and deeper into the mire, the utter degradation.

So, you know, I need to vote, and it needs to count.

Second, we’re in the strangest situation of my life, in which so much about normality has gone out the window. For instance, I may never again go to work at an office, or anywhere other than my home — which overthrows thousands of years of human social and economic behavior. And that’s just one piece of it. I mean, 220,000 Americans are dead from this thing, and it’s far, far from over.

So… maybe I should make an exception in this instance.

Up to now, I’ve held to my resolve to wait until Nov. 3. But each day, more friends and family members go out and vote early — or technically, vote “in-person absentee.”

Which on the one hand supports my plan, by taking pressure off and reducing crowds on the day of. But what if that day is still even more insane, and things break down? I’m pretty sure I’ll get to vote anyway, but what sort of societal breakdown will occur while we’re waiting for all the votes to be counted, and a clear winner to emerge and be accepted?

I dunno. What do y’all think?

For that matter, what do y’all do? What have you done already? Some of you have reported in, but what about everybody else? Who’s voted by mail? Who’s done the “in-person absentee” thing? Who’s waiting for Election Day?

And why?

I would find it helpful to know…

Finally, Mattis speaks up — powerfully

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I made a passing reference to this in the last post, but I’m going to elevate the profile, because since then I’ve actually had the chance to read what the Warrior Monk, James Mattis, had to say today when he broke his long silence about the Trump administration in which he once served.

I urge you to read this piece in The Atlantic, which I think originally broke the story.

And now I’m going to give you the whole statement. Because not a word of what he said should be left out:

I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled. The words “Equal Justice Under Law” are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand—one that all of us should be able to get behind. We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values—our values as people and our values as a nation.

When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.

We must reject any thinking of our cities as a “battlespace” that our uniformed military is called upon to “dominate.” At home, we should use our military only when requested to do so, on very rare occasions, by state governors. Militarizing our response, as we witnessed in Washington, D.C., sets up a conflict—a false conflict— between the military and civilian society. It erodes the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond between men and women in uniform and the society they are sworn to protect, and of which they themselves are a part.

Keeping public order rests with civilian state and local leaders who best understand their communities and are answerable to them.

James Madison wrote in Federalist 14 that “America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat.” We do not need to militarize our response to protests. We need to unite around a common purpose. And it starts by guaranteeing that all of us are equal before the law.

Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that “The Nazi slogan for destroying us…was ‘Divide and Conquer.’ Our American answer is ‘In Union there is Strength.'” We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis—confident that we are better than our politics.

Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.

We can come through this trying time stronger, and with a renewed sense of purpose and respect for one another. The pandemic has shown us that it is not only our troops who are willing to offer the ultimate sacrifice for the safety of the community. Americans in hospitals, grocery stores, post offices, and elsewhere have put their lives on the line in order to serve their fellow citizens and their country. We know that we are better than the abuse of executive authority that we witnessed in Lafayette Square. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution. At the same time, we must remember Lincoln’s “better angels,” and listen to them, as we work to unite.

Only by adopting a new path—which means, in truth, returning to the original path of our founding ideals—will we again be a country admired and respected at home and abroad.

Amen to all of that. Thank you, general.

So, where do you stand on carrying the bat to first base?

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bregman

Here’s a little thought experiment…

Earlier, some of you expressed disapproval of the crowd booing Trump at the World Series Sunday night, while others defended it.

Contemplating another Series controversy from last night’s game (and not the disagreement that led to the Nationals’ manager being ejected — it was quite a game), it occurs to me that it might be a sort of related issue.

I’d like to see y’all’s positions on the booing thing alongside your positions on whether it was OK for Alex Bregman and Juan Soto to carry their bats to first base after hitting home runs.

I have this theory that people who were disturbed by the booing would also disapprove of the bat-carrying, both being violations of certain standards of behavior. Likewise, anyone likely to approve of the “Lock him up” chant would be more inclined to let those young ballplayers strut a bit.

Me, I disapprove of both. I see both within a context of society fraying, becoming less civilized.

You?

soto

Those moderates I’ve praised? They’re now talking impeachment

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Rep. Abigail Spanberger, former CIA case officer.

Remember when I wrote about Mikie Sherrill, the moderate Democrat who is emblematic of those whose elections tipped the House to the Democrats last year (in contrast to “The Squad,” whose elections meant nothing)? I described her as just the kind of person I’d jump at the chance to vote for, any time.

She’s an example of someone who steers clear of partisan combat, spending her energy on issues of concern to all her constituents, regardless of party. It’s for the sake of people like her that Nancy Pelosi has kept her foot on the brake with regard to impeaching Trump.

Well, she, and her friend Rep. Abigail Spanberger — whom I have mentioned in similar terms — and five other moderate freshmen have now had enough, as they explained in an oped today:

This flagrant disregard for the law cannot stand. To uphold and defend our Constitution, Congress must determine whether the president was indeed willing to use his power and withhold security assistance funds to persuade a foreign country to assist him in an upcoming election.

If these allegations are true, we believe these actions represent an impeachable offense. We do not arrive at this conclusion lightly, and we call on our colleagues in Congress to consider the use of all congressional authorities available to us, including the power of “inherent contempt” and impeachment hearings, to address these new allegations, find the truth and protect our national security.

As members of Congress, we have prioritized delivering for our constituents — remaining steadfast in our focus on health care, infrastructure, economic policy and our communities’ priorities. Yet everything we do harks back to our oaths to defend the country. These new allegations are a threat to all we have sworn to protect. We must preserve the checks and balances envisioned by the Founders and restore the trust of the American people in our government. And that is what we intend to do…

Why are they doing this? Because of what we’ve learned the last few days, about the possibility that the president of the United States used taxpayer money to pressure a foreign government to help him tar a domestic political opponent.

And because of who they are:

We have devoted our lives to the service and security of our country, and throughout our careers, we have sworn oaths to defend the Constitution of the United States many times over…

Because like the intelligence officer who blew the whistle, they are looking at something alarming to people who love their country.

Because duty demands it.

And that’s where things stand now…

Rep. Mikie Sherrill, former U.S. Navy helicopter pilot.

A story that sheds light on why I’m for Joe Biden

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Tonight Joe Biden (and others) will be at the Galivants Ferry Stump Speaking. I had thought seriously about going, but decided I had too much to do to take the trip — almost two hours each way. (If you’re closer, I urge you to go. The Stump is always interesting, and this special-edition gathering promises to be particularly so.)

So I’ll give you a picture or two from the last time I saw and interviewed Joe at the Stump, and give you a link to my column about it. It was in 2006. (Special bonus feature: The column quotes former blog regular Paul DeMarco, who happened to be at the Stump — as I noted in a separate post at the time.)

And to add a measure of substance, here’s something else I meant to post last week. I don’t expect it to change any minds among those of you who don’t like Joe for whatever reason, but I offer it as another window into why I’m for him, and really don’t have a second choice among the others running.

It’s a story from the NYT about the way he handled the process that ended in a vote against Reagan’s Supreme Court nominee, Robert Bork. An excerpt:

Joseph R. Biden Jr. was on the brink of victory, but he was unsatisfied.

Mr. Biden, the 44-year-old chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was poised to watch his colleagues reject President Ronald Reagan’s formidable nominee to the Supreme Court, Robert H. Bork. The vote was unlikely to be close. Yet Mr. Biden was hovering in the Senate chamber, plying Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, a Republican of modestly conservative politics and regal bearing, with arguments about Bork’s record.

Rejecting a Supreme Court nominee was an extraordinary act of defiance, and Mr. Biden did not want a narrow vote that could look like an act of raw partisan politics….

Mr. Biden’s entreaties prevailed: Mr. Warner became one of 58 senators to vote against Bork, and one of six Republicans.

That’s Joe. As the piece says, it was a moment when “Mr. Biden’s political ethos found its most vivid and successful expression.” At a moment when most partisans would be satisfied simply to win, Joe wanted to go the extra mile to win in a way less likely to tear the country apart. One more excerpt:

The strategy Chairman Biden deployed then is the same one he is now proposing to bring to the White House as President Biden.

In the 1980s, as today, he saw bipartisan compromise not as a version of surrender, but as a vital tool for achieving Democratic goals….

And in both defining moments — his leadership of the Bork hearings and his third presidential campaign — Mr. Biden made persuading moderates, rather than exciting liberals, his guiding objective….

Yep, that sets him part from the people in his own party and the other who tend to think it terms of getting 50 percent plus one and cramming their policy goals down the opposition’s throat.

I have little patience with such people. And that’s another reason why Joe is my guy. He’s the one candidate who is the polar opposite of what’s wrong with our national politics…

David Brooks is exactly right today about Joe

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In today’s column, David Brooks gets Joe Biden exactly right.

The headline is “Your Average American Joe.”

The subhed is, “Biden is not an individualist.”

Absolutely. And amen to that.

An excerpt from the end:

… The character issue will play out in all sorts of subterranean and powerful ways this election. We have lost our love for ourselves as a people, a faith in our basic goodness, and this loss of faith has been a shock. A lot of voters want to raise their children in an atmosphere marked by decency and compassion, not narcissistic savagery. Values are central to this race.

Here is what is subtly different about Biden. He’s not an individualist. He is a member. He belongs to his family; his hometown, Scranton; his Democratic Party; his Senate; his nation, and is inexplicable without those roots. He used the word “we” 16 times in his short video announcing his candidacy.

Some candidates will run promising transformational change. Biden offers a restoration of the values that bind us as a collective.

Yes! I could have done without the word “collective;” as it brings to mind the AOCs and Bernies of the world, and that’s definitely not who Joe is. I’d have gone with “a community,” or “a people.”

But otherwise, very nicely done.

We communitarian types may not have a party, but we have a candidate…

Can it with the lame excuses for incivility

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The president of the United States is a jerk. His loyal followers are jerks, as they eagerly demonstrate at the rallies where he laps up their adulation. His jerkiness is what they love about him, and theirs is what he loves about them — or would be, if he were capable of loving anyone but himself.

The people in his administration are, with occasional exceptions, also jerks.

And if you think that the way to defeat all these jerks — in elections, or merely in the court of public opinion — is to be a jerk yourself, then you’re an idiot.

Oops. There I go, being a jerk myself. But I’m pretty sick and tired of hearing people give stupid excuses for being uncivilized.

I sort of reached the end of my patience with the “They did it first!” argument this morning:

Oh, can it with the lame excuses for incivility, Eugene. Your opponent being a jerk doesn’t excuse you for being a jerk. It just doesn’t… https://t.co/TFkenWkmw8

— Brad Warthen (@BradWarthen) June 29, 2018

I don’t know about Democrats, but anybody who wants to turn back the tide of boorishness is going to have to start by acting like a grownup. That’s not all that’s required to win, of course, but it’s a prerequisite for my vote.

Poor Eugene Robinson. I normally don’t even read his columns. That headline of his just ended up being the straw on the camel’s back….

Congratulations to Samuel Tenenbaum (on a milestone I’ll never achieve)!

Where do nice guys finish? Watch James Smith to find out

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James Smith greets supporters in Lancaster on the day of the announcement that Mandy Powers Norrell would be his running mate.

I appreciate my friend E.J. Dionne, who is also a nice guy, bringing this to my attention:

“#AnthonyBourdain spoke up for me at a time when people all over the country were making great fun of the column I write.”
Marilyn Hagerty

Ms. Hagerty wrote a nice review of an Olive Garden. Bourdain defended her against the “snarkologists.”
Great piecehttps://t.co/jc7CM3keNJ

— EJ Dionne (@EJDionne) June 9, 2018

It’s the tale of how a little old lady who served as food critic for a newspaper in flyover land was lampooned by the “sophisticates” on the coasts because she unabashedly gave a rave review to an Olive Garden… then was defended by the late Anthony Bourdain.

Bourdain wrote of the then–88-year-old Marilyn Hagerty of Grand Forks:

“She is never mean — even when circumstances would clearly excuse a sharp elbow, a cruel remark,” he wrote. “In fact, watching Marilyn struggle to find something nice to say about a place she clearly loathes is part of the fun. She is, unfailingly, a good neighbor and good citizen first — and entertainer second.”

Bourdain added that the book “kills snark dead.”

“This is a straightforward account of what people have been eating — still ARE eating — in much of America,” he wrote. “As related by a kind, good-hearted reporter looking to pass along as much useful information as she can — while hurting no one.”

So you can see how the “snarkologists” would give her unmitigated hell. How dare she be a genuinely nice person?

Which brings me to James Smith.

This past week, the three candidates for the Democratic nomination for governor or South Carolina had their final “debate” — an occasion for Phil Noble and Marguerite Willis to snarl, slash and attack James Smith in their desperation (which continues to puzzle me) to tear down the only member of their party who has the slightest prayer of winning the election in the fall.

A number of people — some of them the sort who were just then starting to focus on the race (which is ominous) — thought Smith didn’t come out of the debate well — his opponents kept scoring hits on him, and he failed to deflect the hits and didn’t fight back. (Doug hates that kind of thing. Possibly others do as well.)

It didn’t strike me that way, but then I know James, and I knew that his opponents were making innocent things out to be scandalous. For instance, he has been friends with Rick Quinn, and he was Alan Wilson’s attorney at one point. These are both things that I’ve written about approvingly here in the past, because it shows the kind of guy James is — someone who doesn’t dismiss people because they belong to another political party. You know, exactly the quality you need in a Democrat who wants to get anything done as governor, seeing as how the GOP dominates the Legislature.

His opponents were doing this because with the kind of blind partisans who might (if misled sufficiently) choose them over Smith, it is a prima facie sin to be friends with Republicans. At this point, the snarlers would protest that the sin was the taint of scandal attaching to Quinn and Wilson — but the evidence of his association is from a time years before even the slightest hint of scandal wafted in their direction.

So what’s he going to say? Protest that he was friendly with them then, but not now? An opportunist would leap at the chance to do so. But that’s not James Smith.

James Smith is the kind of guy who offers nothing but positive reasons why he wants to be governor and would make a good one. He’s not interested in slashing out at anyone, or tossing anyone to the wolves.

He could, if he possessed a different sort of character. There are plenty of things he could say about the two spoilers (who will never be anything more) attacking him. I’m picturing, for instance, a pretty devastating ad with one Democrat after another stating clearly precisely what they think of Phil Noble, based on their dealings with him.

As for Marguerite Willis, I can think of a number of ways he could undermine her, but this one would do: He could, for instance, ask her to explain why she said, in their first debate back in the winter, that workers should not have the right to organize into unions. While running for the Democratic nomination, mind. It stunned me at the time (I’m no great fan of unions, but surely people have the right to join them), but the amazing thing is that no one has asked this corporate lawyer to explain that answer — not then, not now.

Unless I’ve missed it. If this has happened, I’d appreciate a link.

Can you imagine what Ms. Willis or Noble, who attack him without letup because the NRA doesn’t hate him, would be doing with such an advantage?

But Smith does not. Because he’s just not interested in doing that.

I imagine that in the fall, James will have some critical things to say about his Republican opponent — because then, there will be substantive differences on policy to discuss. But he’s not interested in playing a gotcha game to get his party’s nomination.

Which raises the question — do nice guys finish last, or does a guy who’s only interested in presenting the positives about himself, and not looking for ways to attack his opponents, have a chance in today’s poisonous political atmosphere?

To find out, watch James Smith on Tuesday.

bradwarthen.com

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