Here is a fact. The Republican Party, at the state and local level, is engaged in a purge. With a few exceptions, the apparatus is ousting members who do not support Trump. Anyone who has spoken against him, who will not support the Big Lie, who wish to move the Party away from him, are being removed from offices, barred from positions of responsibility, and pushed out the door. They’re welcome to call themselves Republicans but if they will not throw their lot in with the Trump cult, they are being treated as unreliable and untrustworthy and being removed. This goes all the way up to congress, where Liz Cheney is engaged in defending herself from exactly this.…
Category: history
Management Style
Since Bill Clinton’s win over George H.W. Bush, I’ve held the opinion that what we need is less “inspiration” and better management. Not sexy, of course, but when you consider the enormous complexity of our institutions and the tangled interconnections with the world, it should be obvious that someone whose chief virtue is a Chautauqua Meeting ability to command attention and inflame an audience into tongue-speaking, emotion-laden excitement is not likely to either care or understand the true requirements of the job of president.
Usually, such abilities are at least understandable in a wartime leader. Rallying the troops, so to speak.…
Pathological Ownership
Beth Moore has left the Southern Baptist Conference. If you are unaware of her and what this means, you should look into it. Beth Moore has for many years occupied a special place within that community—a preacher without portfolio, one might say, as the SBC does not permit women to hold the title “pastor.” The straight-up “pure quill” fundamentalism they espouse holds the inferred Biblical injunctions inviolable in this instance, but she has been such a forceful speaker and operates such a large organization that they are loathe to relegate her to silence. So she held that special position.
Till now.…
Empty Thunder
In the aftermath of the Civil War (once also called the War of the Rebellion), many people were certainly concerned, uncertain, and baffled about the future. The purpose of the war had been the preservation of the Union. That statement, that explanation, however, contains within it manifold intentions and issues with which we evidently struggle to this day.
Chief among them being the question, Union of What?
Lee’s surrender at Appomattox gave a formality to the end of the war which was deceptive. Hostilities raged on in various places for years. Look at any war and it is obvious that formal declarations of surrender, victory, etc, are only that—declarations.…
The Day After The Rebellion
Mark Twain (presumably)* said that if one does not wish to appear foolish, it is best to keep silent rather than open one’s mouth and remove all doubt. Sound political advice as well. Advice far too many Republicans failed to take.
I say “failed” but really, they didn’t fail in this—to fail at something implies you tried to do something but just couldn’t make it work. No, they never intended to do anything else. They’ve been riding high on a rhetorical wave assuming their quasi-populist Everyman shtick would stand them in good stead with the voter, who they clearly believe is an idiot.…
Forward
The electoral college has confirmed Biden as the new president. With all the carping and challenging and spleen-venting of the outgoing administration, one must pause for a few moments to consider their reaction had this much drama been generated when Hillary lost. It was certainly possible for the electors then to vote in defiance of the outcome announced in the November election. It is so constructed that they could choose to take a stand and since Clinton did win the popular vote, there would have been nothing technically wrong with them saying “No, we’re not letting this one through.”
There have been close elections in the past where this might have happened, but another consideration comes into play, that of maintaining the credibility of our institutions.…
Sifting Babel
Richard Nixon lost the 1960 election to John F. Kennedy by basically one vote per district across the country. Contrary to the popular myth that grew up around JFK, he was not even close to a landslide, and had Nixon challenged the outcome in court, which many of his advisors were urging him to do, history might have been different. Nixon demurred. He said he refused to be the cause of a constitutional crisis, took his loss, and congratulated Kennedy. Despite who he was and what he later did, he had a line he would not cross. For the good of the country.…
Reality vs Not
The image of Trump that says all one needs to know about him came during the so-called Million MAGA March, when his SUV drove through the crowds that had assembled in D.C. on his behalf. We see him pressed against the window, hand raised, grinning, and scooting on by to their cheers. He did not stop. They came for him but he did not stop. He knew they were coming, so something could have been prepared for him to at least give a short speech. But he did not stop. He hurried through, grinning at them. Where was he going that he could not stop to give something back to his supporters?…
Over?
The temptation to gloat is immense. After four years of living in the land of the cognitively dissonant, we have managed to displace a major symptom of national dysfunction.
Gloating would be a huge mistake.
The senate is still in the hands of the Party of Enablers who have for 12 years stood in the way of national amity. Mitch McConnell is for the moment still the majority leader there and he has already made it clear he intends to do the same to Biden that he did to Obama. I don’t care what your opinion may be of a specific policy, this is petty, vindictive, and destructive obstructionism and a palsy on our democracy.…
A Couple of Thoughts in Advance of Change
I do not usually make predictions about elections. This is not a prediction. But I want to make a couple of observations ahead of Tuesday, if for no other reason than to see how things play out against my own assessments.
We have seen record early voting. As of this morning something like 82 million ballots have already been cast. How they will be counted is at issue, particularly in four states—Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina. Be that as it may, it is the numbers that interest me here.
Traditionally, it appears Republicans benefit from low turn-out. In 2016 we had 53% turnout.…