Category Archives: Pure Politics

Who Will We Choose to Be?

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America stands at a crossroads. Are Nebraskans willing to decide? Or will many ignore history and choose the path of least resistance, comfortable in the safety of their whiteness (for now)?

Ask yourself: Was Joe Biden elected president in 2020? Current president Donald Trump says no, that he won the election and Biden stole it. There is zero credible evidence for this assertion. But here we are, more than five years later, with insurrectionists on the loose, pardoned by the president. Several have been arrested for new crimes. One—Jared Wise—is a senior advisor at the Justice Department.

Does the First Amendment guarantee freedom of speech? Is due process of law guaranteed to “any person,” as it says in the Fourteenth Amendment, before they can be deprived of their liberty?

What kind of system does the president prefer? He told America in 2018 that he and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un had “fallen in love.” He has said that he admires the “loyalty” the people have for Kim (loyalty which is state-mandated), and Trump has said he wishes Americans would display that same reverence for him. It’s quite similar to statements he’s made praising “president for life” Vladimir Putin’s post-democratic Russia.

And during his second term, MAGA has repeatedly floated this idea of a third term, as well as a dynastic transfer of power to one of Trump’s children.

On Sept. 12, when a Fox News reporter asked Trump about the current rash of political violence on the right and left, offering him a chance to call for calm and national unity, he had this to say:

“The radicals on the right are radical because they don’t want to see crime … The radicals on the left are the problem – and they are vicious and horrible and politically savvy.”

The statement appears to make the claim that right-wing political violence stems from righteous anger at lawlessness, while left-wing radicals are simply “vicious”. Seizing the moment, Attorney General Pam Bondi noted

that the Justice Department would “go after” Americans for “hate speech,” a statement she later walked back.

But just recently, Nebraska Senator Deb Fischer told Nebraska Public Media, “It’s not free speech to celebrate the death of someone,” and that those who do so need to be “held responsible.”

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Now the National Guard is spreading nationwide—Portland is next— coordinating with ICE and behaving as an occupying force rather than the emergency-response “citizen army” that is their charter.

Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen is all in, circumventing the legislature to offer the McCook prison facility to ICE for detainment of those they sweep up in raids of workplaces, streets, and residential neighborhoods.

But they are not sweeping up the white male citizens who dominate the American assassination game in their dragnet.

Meanwhile Pete Hegseth, our hair-sprayed celebrity Secretary of Defense, has called every single flag officer in the US armed forces, wherever they may be, to an auditorium in Quantico, Va., on Sept. 30, ostensibly to hear a speech from him.

Many officers reportedly fear a loyalty purge well beyond the anti-DEI cuts to the GOFO (General Officer/Flag Officer) ranks Hegseth has made thus far. Aside from that, it is an unprecedentedly expensive and dangerous gathering that will impact military readiness in multiple active theaters of war. Is that important?

As a matter of history, at least one retired general pointed out online that Hitler called a meeting of all of his general officers in 1935 to extract a loyalty pledge prior to implementing his domestic plans. Hegseth’s winking response? “Cool story, General.”

And at a recent memorial for a MAGA-friendly pundit who was just the latest political figure—this time on the right—to be assassinated by a disturbed man with a gun, White House senior advisor on immigration Stephen Miller harkens back to a famous speech of the 1940s. He dramatically describes the “storm” that this particular killing has generated, rhetorically transforming the trigger-pulling “him” into a non- specific, broadly threatening, anti-American “they”—then switching to an ominous “You”:

“They cannot conceive of the army that they have arisen in all of us…You have nothing. You are nothing. You are wickedness. You are jealousy. You are envy. You are hatred. You are nothing.”

You get the idea. The many thousands in the crowd, in their Trump gear, heard him loud and clear. One man’s car was painted with the slogan, “Tolerance Killed Charlie Kirk.”

Now the environment appears right for Pam Bondi to make good Trump’s threat to prosecute his political enemies, as former FBI director James Comey—a lifelong Republican—faces a Justice Department indictment.

Of course, the administration’s “border czar”, Tom Homan, was just reported to have taken $50,000 in bribes from the FBI. The Justice Department apparently will not prosecute, and his job appears safe.

But it seems Trump will not rest until he finds a prosecutor to charge a member of the Federal Reserve—one he wants out—with a crime of his invention.

Former President Obama is being “investigated.” Former UN ambassador John Bolton’s home was recently raided. Dozens of career government prosecutors have been fired, and some are being investigated, for working on the January 6 insurrection cases.

Constitutional Republic or fanatical patriot cult? Respectful political opposition and rule of law, or constant attempts to frighten and dominate domestic “enemies” with dehumanizing Christian Nationalist rhetoric and veiled threats against citizens, all emanating from openly partisan elected officials? Which will it be, Nebraska?

As someone who wasn’t born in America, I think I’ve made my choice.

Commentary originally submitted and accepted by the Nebraska Examiner. I declined requested rewrites demanded from a “national editor (not the Nebraska Examiner editor), so the article was not published. I provide the final submitted version here.

A Shadow Looms Over Omaha’s Leaders 

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Unpublished editorial

This Tuesday, Omaha Mayor Jean Stothert and Police Chief Todd Schmaderer held a press conference intended to “quell apprehension amplified by national reports of imminent deportations under the new Trump administration,” according to the Nebraska Examiner.

Asked what would happen if federal officials insisted on help, Schmaderer said he doesn’t have to stray from his defined mission: 

“The federal government can’t come one day and give a directive to the Omaha police chief, to the mayor, to say, ‘This is what you’re going to do.’”

The two were responding, as the Associated Press reports, to a new memo written by acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, which instructs the Justice Department’s civil division to work with a newly formed “Sanctuary Cities Enforcement Working Group.” The group will  identify state and local laws and policies that “threaten to impede” the Trump administration’s immigration efforts and potentially challenge them in court, according to the memo.

This action, and this memo, are generally being reported nationally as a tool to go after heavily Democratic cities that “hinder” Justice Department anti-immigration efforts, such as via statue, policies or immigrant-friendly court actions. 

But the leading argument is not the most salient one for Omaha. Later in the 3-page memo, we find this: 

“Federal law prohibits state and local actors from resisting, obstructing and otherwise failing to comply with lawful immigration-related commands and requests.” (Emphasis added)

Chief Schmaderer is probably banking on that word “lawful” to hold the status quo and allow him to resist any federal “commands” he finds distasteful (or professionally dangerous). But let’s look closely, here in 2025, at the legal parameters of the authority of the executive branch—charged with enforcing the nation’s laws—as defined by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Consider that one reason Trump is back in office is a series of Trump-friendly rulings by the conservative Court, culminating in Trump v. United States (2024), which grants presidents unqualified immunity from any laws they may break while engaged in acts “within their core constitutional purview.” 

I would argue that Mr. Trump regards his America First crackdown on illegal immigration as a very “core” act with regard to enforcing the law, especially since deporting undocumented immigrants was the main plank of his campaign platform. And, to be clear, those who cross the border without going through channels have broken the law.

But Mr. Trump, as we have seen, breaks the law and then claims political persecution is driving anyone hoping to hold him accountable (those 34 felonies and numerous former federal indictments). Rather than Trump, it is often the DA or prosecutor coming after him whose professional life ends in tatters. So what’s to stop him now, with his immunity ruling in hand, from breaking any law that gets in his way? 

Given the immunity ruling and Trump’s penchant for defining legality under his own terms, it is safe to say that any law designed to constrain this president from executing what he believes to be his “core” functions—to include  punishing people who impede those functions—is no longer a law. It is a “suggestion” at best. And to Trump, any suggestion that his power should be limited is seen as a challenge. 

So what becomes of Omaha? Lincoln? Admirably, you have pledged to tread the legal path and obstain from operating outside your purview, even if so ordered. 

But what of the divergent path the president may believe to be “more” legal—perhaps even “perfect”—given his history and the power of immunity recently bestowed upon him? 

In 2025, we must ask—which of those represents the “legal” choice? It looks like only time will tell.

Trump’s Return: Implications for U.S. Democracy

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January 9, 2025

From Exile to Victory

Today is a National Day of Mourning. As I write this, the body of Jimmy Carter lies in state at the Capitol, the hallowed center of America’s democracy that was violently attacked by Donald Trump’s supporters four years ago last Monday. 

He told them to go to that same Capitol and “fight like hell” as Congress attempted to certify the results of a free and fair election, so they did. It was a counterpart for today; it was a national day of shame. The world looked upon the United States as a democracy losing itself to violent hooliganism.

But in eleven days, the same Donald Trump who refused to recognize the vote of the people, the one who tried to engineer a reversal of Democratic President Joe Biden’s win by whatever means necessary, who has been convicted of 34 felonies, who assaults women, who “allegedly” stashed a trove of secret government documents in his bathroom (I guess we’ll never know), who calls America a “garbage can” fighting “forever wars” while praising Putin’s blood-soaked Russia—this man will be sworn in as president once again. 

He will be sworn in by a member of the Supreme Court, a conservative majority of which has  granted him constitutionally questionable immunity from prosecution for his many alleged crimes. As I write this, that same Court has just narrowly decided not to try to erase his 34 state felony convictions for crimes committed before he was in office. 

This is not to mention the literally thousands of lawsuits Trump has been hit with, the payouts to hoodwinked “students” of the phony Trump University, his civil trial for sexual assault of Ms. E. Jean Carroll (for which he was found liable), or the many other women who have come forward to accuse him of assault. 

Remember the Donald Trump who admitted barging into the dressing rooms of his Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants to “inspect” the half-dressed contestants? Because he could? The Trump whom we heard on tape claiming that he could not help himself, could not resist grabbing and kissing beautiful women? It’s the same Trump now. 

As Gallup notes, the Supreme Court protecting Trump from accountablity presides over a court system that it appears Americans no longer trust. In 2020, 59% of those polled said they have confidence in the courts. A few weeks ago, Gallup released a poll showing that in the last five years, the number has dropped to 35%. According to Gallup, this is the kind of rapid decline in confidence seen during recent upheavals in countries like Myanmar, Venezuela, and Syria.

Yet it is by design. A democraticaly elected president cannot become a “dictator on day one,” as Trump has publicly promised, without a little help from his friends. As Putin and his ilk have done in Russia, Hungary, Syria, Venezuela, and other former democracies, Trump must undermine the authority of the courts in the eyes of the public before he can bend them to his will. 

Ironically, in the case of the Supreme Court, the unaddressed ethical lapses and outrageous behaviors of conservative justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, as exhaustively reported by Pro Publica, have aided this campaign against the courts’ general credibility. Chief Justice Roberts’ annoyed dismissals of any hint of wrongdoing, as if to suggest that wrongdoing by members of a powerful court with no one to answer to but itself is impossible, have also likely moved the needle. 

And of course, Trump relentlessly attacks every judge, prosecutor, or DA who dares to come after him, casting them as the Spanish Inquisition and himself as a modern Jesus of Nazareth. But as with those juries that have found him to be less than innocent, to me the publicly available evidence alone makes him look more like a criminal being prosecuted by the law than a politician being persecuted by his enemies. There’s just no evidence of the latter, unless you look all the way back to the 2019 Ukraine debacle, Trump’s mob-like pressure campaign to force the Ukranian government to smear the reputation of candidate Joe Biden (the subject of Trump’s first impeachment.)

Speaking of protecting the public from wrongdoers, that was also Aileen Cannon’s job in presiding over Trump’s trial for allegedly stealing top secret government documents. We all saw what happened with Trump’s appointee in charge—endless delays and needless hearings on every frivolous motion, followed by prompt pre-election dismissal of the case based on the already-defeated notion that the special prosecutor was “illegally appointed.” 

That was the end, as they say, of that. But it should have been only the beginning. Special Counsel Jack Smith was ready to appeal. 

Then Trump won the election. 

From Victory to Retribution

Yes, once again, Trump won. Now, like a character in a novel rescued from unjust banishment and restored to the throne, Trump’s ignominious past begins to fall away in favor of an imagined “return of the king” narrative favored by the administration and its friends in high (and low) places.

Indeed, the major media, much of which is now owned by Trump’s fellow billionaires, seem to be suffering a major case of amnesia regarding the historic coup attempt. Three days ago was the fourth anniversary of the January 6 attack. In perusing the media that morning, one of the two articles I saw on the topic was from never-Trump conservative David Frum, writing in The Atlantic on the topic of—you guessed it—how the incoming administration and its apologists are trying to “erase” the legacy of January 6. 

It must be erased, because this king has returned for “retribution” and “justice,” as promised when he announced his candidacy in early 2023. Before even  taking office, he has already threatened our neighbors both north and south, throwing in Panama and Denmark for good measure. He has threatened GOP elected officials like Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney with “military tribunals”, whatever that is supposed to look like. 

You may recall that four-star General Mark Milley, who was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, spoke on the phone with his Chinese counterpart during the mayhem of January 6, 2021. As the world press was live-reporting on a possible coup by Trump’s supporters, who were marching through the halls of the Capitol chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” and defecating on elected officials’ desks, and while Trump himself did nothing but watch the sordid show unfold on television, Milley took responsibility for assuring the Chinese government that the United States nuclear arsenal was under control and that there was no threat of an unprovoked nuclear strike. 

The Chinese were completely blind regarding what may have been happening in terms of the security of the U.S. nuclear arsenal and chain of command. Further, U.S. intelligence indicated that weeks earlier, the Chinese had acquired intelligence of their own suggesting a possible first strike by the U.S. So Milley’s call may have been instrumental in averting an accidental nuclear exchange. 

But Trump, after a couple of years spent rehabilitating himself among his supporters, was retroactively livid. He said publicly in September 2023 that Milley’s actions were treasonous and, in past times, would have merited court-martial and execution. In other words, he was insinuating that his former Joint Chiefs Chariman, a decorated war hero and a symbol of the modern military, could be put to death for calming the global situation while Trump sulked in front of his TV, watching the insurrection he co-authored. 

What’s more, at the time, Milley’s call had been discussed and authorized by the then-Secretary of State and acting Secretary of Defense. While it may be argued Milley exceeded his statutory authority in making the call, it may also be argued—and more convincingly—that bridging the gaping hole in the chain of command left by the absent president was the more immediate concern.

Professor Tom Nichols of the U.S. Naval War College said as much, writing in The Atlantic at the time that “[t]he Constitution of the United States has no provision for the control of planet-destroying weapons while the President is losing his mind and trying to overthrow the government itself.”

Since that time, General Milley has become a standard-issue MAGA pariah, to the point that he has been forced to barricade his home and hire private security for his family. It’s a familiar story now. By taking a stand for the Constitution and the public good, Milley has become  the symbolic anti-MAGA warrior who must be diminished.

Let’s remember what Trump confidant (and fellow convict) Steve Bannon has been saying for years: “Our goal is the deconstruction of the administrative state.” 

Milley has since said publicly that Trump is “the most dangerous person ever” and “a fascist to the core.” With Trump about to gain unchecked power, I am very concerned for the general’s future, and by extension the future of all who value the checks and balances of the Constitution, the integrity of the courts, and the rule of law. 

But we who value such things are no longer the majority. Instead, the country will inherit the kind of future that a small plurality of Americans and a decisive majority of Nebraskans asked for with their votes last November. It’s a future they have gifted to Trump the Immune, but whatever fruits it bears will fall to all of us. 

They say the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Let us see how this future unfolds. 

Is Democracy a Fading Hope?

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While we were all being mesmerized by the Clown Circus version of an insurrection, and years before that as we stood rigidly by, hypnotized by the seemingly talentless and ignorant man as he bullied and intimidated his way into controlling the fate of nearly every member of the Republican Party—while we were distracted by all that, we may have overlooked the slipping away of our democracy. 

We now have—officially—one party that believes in (or at least attempts to abide by) the Constitution, the rule of law, and all the responsibilities that go with it. We have another party, formerly made up of conservatives and the wealthy and now composed of conspiracy-dealing whack jobs (and the wealthy), that has no use for the rule of law, or the Constitution, or even for truth itself. 

These people see the writing on the wall, that under a true democracy, with arguments and policy constrained by what we are now forced to refer to as “objective reality” (i.e., the opposite of “alternative facts”), there is no cogent way to argue for white minority rule among a pluralist society of informed voters. Especially given how it has been so-far pursued by the party of white supremacy: voter suppression, voter intimidation, gerrymandering, throwing out ballots from counties they don’t like, lawsuits when they can’t do that, and more voter suppression. 

They understand the ‘theoretical’ votes are not there for white rule via apartheid-like policies, thus the ‘actual’ vote must be managed into a different result. It was made abundantly clear in 2008 and again in 2012. Only the electoral college’s “slavery days” quirks, the bored cynicism of coddled white voters, and the fierce misogyny of those same coddled white voters saved Republicans in 2016. And even for their one bedraggled ‘victory’, look at the price they have paid.

2020 restored the pattern despite every effort Republicans could make to undermine and sully the results of the best-managed election in modern history. But try as they might they could not erase the 7,000,000 voters who put Joe Biden in the White House. That’s a problem.

Democracy threatens to solidify this trend away from Republican presidents winning the popular vote—and even the electoral college vote! So now the Trump party has rejected democracy. It really is as simple as that.

To replace it, they have the Golden Calf himself, Donald Trump, the would-be Putin, the king of lies. Yes, when they paraded that gold-plated Donald Trump idol through the Conservative Political Action Committee meeting this year—a commission I have no doubt was financed by the Trump campaign—you could feel the reverence, the deeply religious and fact-free belief system that underlies the widespread worship of the former TV reality show huckster and all-around swindler. 

His fears are their fears. His deep-seated insecurity and the hatred it breeds for those who can actually do things, create things or manage things successfully—it’s their insecurity too. You can feel the animosity for “elites” in every word they speak, where “elite”is a catch-all term like “vermin” or “subhuman” or “mongrel”. We might think “liberal” is the word they want, that reliable pejorative, but recall these are not Republicans, nor conservatives. These are the people who bragged, at the first CPAC gathering after Trump’s unlikely electoral college victory, that “we killed Ronald Reagan.” In fact it seems these would-be revolutionaries care less for their party’s former leadership and luminaries than they do for just about anyone else. Karl Rove? Loser. G.W. Bush? Loser. His dad? Loser. 

It makes sense. If you want to reform a major political party in your idol’s image, the first thing you have to do is take down the old idols. Or at least those you perceive (in your mercenary, transaction-based world) as idols, since you cannot perceive of a public servant who just wants to do a good job for the people. That last notion, to a Trump party member, can only be believed by an ignorant fool. You don’t compromise, you don’t cooperate, and who’s gonna tell you you didn’t do a good job? Some elitist loser with a $400 haircut?

You dominate. 

Most interesting to me are those in that other branch, the one that used to wield at least some power over the presidency. They could, as lawmakers at least in name, reserve some power to themselves. But Trump party members in Congress are more than happy to toss whatever may count as their dignity overboard (some would be “air bailing” their dignity, but still, I’m sure they believe they have some). They want to be sycophants, they want to be toadies, they want to place their fate in the hands of someone just as likely to ruin their lives as grant them access to the “inner sanctum” (i.e., the front 9 at Trump’s Doral). 

It really does puzzle me, and the only explanation I can manage is that they were never leaders in the first place. They are, by definition, followers. They were voted in on a racist Tea Party wave and its aftermath for “saying the things” white supremacists were waiting to hear. Then it got easier, with loudmouth Trump up there from 2015 on, always out front saying all the nasty, racist things they would have shied away from saying (not because they didn’t believe it). They are exactly like the snot-nose kids who stand behind the playground bully and savor his amoral cruelty vicariously, too timid and frightened to say and do the same things. And sure, the bully may turn his hateful gaze on a toadie one day—but for now standing behind him is the safest place to be. And maybe a place to get noticed.

It’s just hard to come to terms with the fact that people like Lyndsay Graham are so spineless and lacking in basic dignity, because until recently many of us regular people would have at least respected “the office” of Republican members of the Senate. We respected their office simply because of the fact that they were among the few who are honored with such an office, and were entrusted by the people to work in their best interest. They were “leaders.” You had to give them a shot.

No longer. The pact is now much less nuanced than party politics or party goals ever were. We see, with a new Senator who (for example) doesn’t understand the three branches of government, and with local party officials “censuring” those few remaining Republican members of Congress and the Senate who “defied” Trump (i.e., voted for the truth about his Elmer Fudd style insurrection). We see clearly that for some regions—some voters—the only qualification for office is to be all-in with Trump. How hard is that? 

And when this ongoing purge is complete, when there is not a single person in the Republican Party who does not support every single thing that Donald Trump does or says, it will be even easier. 

They got rid of the Republican Party platform for 2020, saying the party was basically behind Trump and everything Trump might do. The name change will come shortly. When he runs in 2024, it will be under the Trump Party banner. The name will say it all—unless you want to say something different and throw away your future. Or maybe get punched in the mouth.

Will there be a party for conservatives in 2024? Will there be an election—or will it just be a more properly planned coup? It remains to be seen, which itself says a lot about how much has changed while we slept. I can safely predict, however, that once again it won’t be any fun for the regular folks. Just another pointless headache to endure as we try to live our basic little lives, where there’s really no time or desire to play at dice for the raiments of old would-be saviors.

L’État N’est Pas Nous

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Here’s the thing about political power in America in 2020, from a pragmatist/realist viewpoint: 

When you hold as much power as the Republican Party currently does, you hold the actual levers of power in this country – Congressional, Executive, and Judicial power. Rather than a representative government, where a Congressman or Senator works on behalf of constituents, the government begins to revolve around this party’s central power base, to which these so-called representatives must show fealty. The party becomes the power. And when the interests of this small power base clash with the interests of the people, the politicians of this party who side with the people become  apostates, they are banished from the halls of power. As we’ve seen, no current member of the party in power has the wherewithal to defy the power base. And therefore the people hold no power.

As we are witnessing this week, it becomes difficult-to-impossible for a small majority in one half of one branch of government to hold the other party to account when that party, basking in its power,  decides it is not subject to the Constitution’s accountability measures—its so-called “checks and balances”.  

That is our American irony. No one is interested in checking or balancing their own power.

In this situation, the pejorative “above the law” can cease to be a pejorative from the perspective of the few who wield the vast power undergirding law and its enforcement. “L‘état,” the French king said, “c’est moi.” The law becomes what they say the law is. It exists to serve them, not to restrain them. In the common tongue, the question being posed by a party whose primary long-term goal is to retain and consolidate that power into permanence is, “Who’s gonna stop us?” We are witnessing the answer to that question this week. That is, we are watching a proceeding called a “trial”, the outcome of which — acquittal — we already know. It is assured. Because a power advantage, not facts or law, will determine that outcome.

“We have the vote”, we say, but who are “we”? One party is steadily gathering to itself the power over who votes, and how, and where, and in what gerrymandered district. I submit that a newly emboldened narcissist madman, with fresh confirmation that he can do “whatever he wants as president”, will have his people get right to work on expanding that advantage (with welcome help from his friends in the East). They will choose which voters they want to vote, and if your profile matches those on the other side, or even those on the fence–they won’t choose you. 

They vote in Russia. They vote in Iran. Those bastions of democracy. But only the approved candidate wins. Remember the last “election” for Saddam Hussein? Iraqi officials declared Saddam had been re-elected by a 100% unanimous vote of all 11,445,638 eligible Iraqi citizens.

I’m just figuring this out for myself, not preaching. I am over the shock of this realization. I’m neither Democrat nor Republican, I feel no hatred or need for vengeance, though I do feel some pity and disgust at unchanging human nature. At this moment I feel, maybe for the first time, that Martin Luther King’s optimism for the future of America was misplaced. It appears that the arc he spoke of does not, in the end, bend towards justice. It bends toward greed and malice. And that seems to be the way the minority of this society, clinging to power by whatever means necessary, wants it.

I’ve always been an observer first, and I have no illusions regarding the extent of my own political power, which is negligible (like any American who is not very wealthy or in office).  I am aware that even my presidential vote (thanks to the antiquated Electoral College) is powerless. I am aware that power in this country, rather than resting with the people as the old document says, rests with those ravenous and ruthless enough to crave it beyond the pale of all moral or legal restraint. And that is not me.

And so the question hangs unanswered in the air – who’s gonna stop them?