Tag Archives: maga

Who Will We Choose to Be?

Posted on by
Reply

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.”

***

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.

Dear Senator Fischer: This Must End Now

Posted on by
Reply

Recently, Nebraska Senator Deb Fischer published another of her occasional updates for constituents. 

Ms. Fischer, on message as usual under the banner of “fiscal sanity,” related various earmarking victories for Nebraska communities and the common-sense approach the Republican-controlled Senate brings to America’s fiscal challenges.

In defending the Trump administration’s wholesale overhaul of the federal government’s mission—including canceling global aid programs and silencing the Voice of America overseas, pardoning dozens of violent criminals convicted of assaulting police, putting an unqualified person who traffics in conspiracy theories in charge of the nation’s health, offering insults and threats to our allies in Europe and the Americas rather than cooperation, accusing Ukraine of “starting a war” while laughing with Putin on his red carpet, sending troops into “Democrat”  cities against the will of local leaders (an action just ruled illegal), imposing tariffs on nations we don’t even trade with, and so on—Ms. Fischer argues that what she and her GOP colleagues are about is “reducing the reckless spending that has helped push our national debt past $37 trillion.” 

It’s true, you know, about the debt. It’s big. It was true in 2012, when Ms. Fischer was elected to the Senate. The debt was big in 2017, before Trump’s first term, and even bigger after. And, with the recent extension of the 2017 tax cuts, along with a quickly executed debt ceiling rise of some $4 trillion, it is projected to be even bigger in 2028. 

Because Republicans only complain about the nation’s debt when Democrats are in charge. As soon as a Republican president appears, these fears are magically transformed into “investing for growth” (i.e., tax cuts). That particular debt is supposed to pay for itself, right? Yet here we are. 

Of course, a revenue source apparently escaping the senator’s notice is at work in the form of the president’s sweeping, on-again/off-again tariffs, which were just declared illegal by a federal judge because Congress is assigned that power by the Constitution. (Apparently this judge, we will be told, is one of those who are ideologically aligned against the “president’s mandate,” something that doesn’t exist. And this sentiment will be echoed by those in the Senate who, according to law, actually hold the power Trump is exercising.) 

The tariffs are indeed pulling in millions of dollars every day. And it’s not a tax on you or me! Not technically. But since a tariff is charged to the importer of the goods (on the American side), not the foreign shipper, guess who will ultimately be paying it? Hint: not foreigners.

Now the government needs a budget, and that will require Democrats to vote for it. But Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, referring to Trump slashing funds already appropriated by Congress via legally questionable “pocket rescissions”, said that it’s “hard to justify voting for bills that aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.” Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, in a recent letter to colleagues, said that “Senate Republicans must decide: Stand up for the legislative branch or enable Trump’s slide toward authoritarianism.”

I agree. While a focus on numbers and debt may sound “serious” (and traditionally Republican) in print, Ms. Fischer’s message ignores other immediate emergencies facing this nation. 

I will add, Senator Fischer: remember how you felt on January 6, 2021? Many of the rest of us still feel that way. Your brief, three-sentence statement on that day was quite clear: “These rioters have no constitutional right to harm law enforcement and storm our Capitol. We are a nation of laws, not some banana republic. This must end now.”

That, too, remains true. We are indeed a nation of laws. Yet, as Ms. Fischer surely knows, one of those violent, lawless men who attacked the police on that day while yelling, “Kill ‘em!”—Jared L. Wise—is now employed by Donald Trump’s Justice Department as a “senior advisor.” 

So I offer your message back to you, Ms. Fischer, regarding this president who acts, with the blessings of his party, as a law unto himself: 

This must end now.

Submitted for publication to the Nebraska Examiner, not accepted

What’s the Opposite of “Woke”?

Posted on by
Reply

Letter to the Editor, Lincoln Journal-Star, Feb. 12, 2025.

As a Nebraskan, I’m naturally concerned about wokeness. The nation, and most Nebraskans, elected a president whose entire mission appears to be centered around “anti-wokeness.” If that doesn’t make anti-wokeness important, I don’t know what would. 

The problem is figuring out what “wokeness” means. 

We can compare “woke” with neologisms from the past that were employed as ideological  labels. I remember a few decades ago, conservatives seemed obsessed with the spread of “Islamofascism.” But as with “woke,” the definition of the term appeared pretty random, sort of circling around the idea that to be Islamic and an enemy of the United States is to be Islamofascist. 

Then there are the words that “surround” a term like “woke”, such as when the president pairs the epithet “woke” with companion labels like “communist, globalist, leftist, Marxist,” etc.  By association alone, we can understand that to be “woke” is to NOT be a good MAGA Republican. Maybe that’s enough.

In truth, we all know what words really mean—or don’t mean. To MAGA conservatives, those of us who support DEI initiatives, those who support helping refugees, those who condemn the demonization of all marginalized and powerless Americans—we are “woke”.

So what should a never-Trump Republican call folks who witnessed the chaos and lawlessness of Trump’s first term, and then voted for another one?

I think the term we’re looking for would simply be the opposite of woke. 

Not “anti-woke,” which limits them to what they are not.

Perhaps the word is “asleep”. 

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

Posted on by
Reply

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. 

A Modest Proposal

Posted on by
1

You know the old saying—when life gives you lemons…

Yesterday, life gave us Biden vs. Trump two-point-ohhhhh my. Nobody wants it. Everybody dreads it. Still, it’s’ what we’ll get. 

Lemons. 

But the old saying skips a few details. Exactly how do you make the lemonade? The answer is simple: you squeeze the lemons. You squeeze the juice out of them. Then you sweeten up that juice and drink it down. 

What is a president, after all? Little more than an actor, a figurehead who utters the pronouncements and signs the documents written by beurocratic writer eggheads working with bureucratic math eggheads and low-level White House Congressional liaison eggheads. (I probably don’t have to mention that none of these eggheads are octegenarians—only the politicians who stand in front of the cameras and spout whatever comes into their heads have that kind of job security.) 

The acts are getting stale, the actors losing their touch. We’ve seen this movie too many times. Thus our current national slow-motion malaise, amplified by a social media experiment gone awry, which will culminate in a moment next November that few want to see happen, regardless of the outcome. And those few are a scary few, at least on occasions when they sufficiently outnumber the objects of their projected self-loathing. 

Unless…

Because let’s face the cold, hard facts: Trump is ascendant in his GOP, while Biden is an albatross for Democrats. It doesn’t make much sense, but there it is. You can blame the media’s “Trump enrichment syndrome” or the gullibility of yokels, the fragility of gun-baring white men, or the ennui of an entire people who’ve had too damn much success on the hunt  for another cheap thrill. Or you can blame God, or the stars and planets. 

But it won’t change what you will get—not a lemon, but a dried up old orange. And a crazy one at that. 

We must ask ourselves, though: What else could we get? What good thing could we make from this MAGA obsession, which has resulted in the RNC going to the Trump family and Lara Trump declaring that “every penny” will now go to Trump’s campaign (which is also his legal defense fund)? What can we make from that?

The word is Orangeade. Another word is “super-majority”. And all Democrats would need to do is concentrate on the important Senate and House races, outspend strapped Republicans in strategic vulnerable and swing districts (leaving some non-MAGA GOP opponents in place), and sell this message to voters disgusted by Trump but also poisoned against Biden and wary of a “President Harris”: Trump will be contained in his White House like Sauruman in his tower. 

Rage as Trump might, a Congress helmed by Democrats in both houses—including a super-majority of 60 senators—can thwart practically every move he and his captured Supreme Court may try to make toward their dream of a post-democratic autocracy. 

(Oh yes, the Supreme Court which, at this time, appears in the tank for Trump but still cannot actually write the legislation they favor. That is the job of Congress, which can also write laws that shape an out-of-whack Supreme Court. So I hope you see I am describing a “twofer”.)

I know what you’re saying. “Impossible. It’s never been done.” Which would be correct. Kind of like there’s never been anyone elected back to the White House after attempting to seize power from the man who beat him in the previous election. Like there’s never been a president under mulitple criminal indictments, or a president who has been found guilty of sexual assault by a jury of his peers.

Oh yeah, there’s a lot of “never beens” these days. Aren’t you ready for another of your own, Democrats? After all, in 2008 there had never been a Black president. There had never been legal gay marriage in the US. Few nations offered women reproductive rights of any kind, and even fewer allow abortions (still). 

In 1919, women had “never been” voters, and only one (a fluke) had been a Member of Congress. 

In 1860, Black Americans had “never been” free. 

And remember, the Trump-inspired Congressional losses of his tenure, while modest, were also unprecedented.

So hammer this message home, from now until November: Instead of handing the nation to Trump and his amoral MAGA allies like Greene, Goetz and Graham, a coalition of Independents (like myself), Democrats, and Republican refugees can use the 2024 election to take it all away from them. We can box Trump in the White House, alone, with only his “hand-picked” (translation: incompetent,  self-interested and likely criminal) loyalists to defend him (for as long as that lasts). 

The coalition will be temporary by nature. We’re talking about Congress, where power shifts in the wind like the sands of the desert.

And how long would his presidency last? The Supreme Court appears poised to delay Trump’s prosecution until he can secure the presidency. The day he enters office, Trump’s Justice Department will end the prosecutions. On the next day, Congress can proceed with impeachment number three. And this time it sticks. As the new boss, his VP will have a stark choice: play ball with a re-empowered Congress, or get shown the door like the old boss.

And whatever Trump’s Supreme Court bloc tries to do, a robust Congress could undo. 

I would brand it a “velvet revolution,” seizing power from the executive and returning it to the people via ballot box patriotism. If this were to be achieved, not only would America be successful in containing MAGA fever and thus protecting vulnerable Americans from its worst instincts. It would also, in the process, re-empower the branch of government that should in fact wield the most conspicuous authority of the three—because it is the people’s branch, populated with the people’s representatives. At least in theory. Can we make it a reality? Why shouldn’t we? We have no king.

And who knows? Maybe Democrats can sweep Biden back in too, with a sort of reverse Congressional coattail effect. Not that it really matters.

Many will say an alliance of progressive and moderate Americans cannot do it, because the right-leaning Independents and nervous traditionalist Republicans will balk. But really they don’t want us to try, and their voices are louder, individually, than ours. They want it to stay that way. So the powerful of all stripes will shout down such an idea as unrealistic. Unfortunately, such rhetoric has its own power in our omnipresent mediascape.

But never forget what our collective power can do at the voting booth. Don’t forget the hope that was inspired in 2008, and don’t fear the backlash—that will happen no matter what you do.

The only alternative to victory is surrender to the loudest, angriest, and most ignorant voices among us.