2022 Election Musings

Folks, I nearly titled this “Why can’t we get along?” But I decided to go with the above title, in the hopes that someone out there will attempt to civilly answer the questions I’m about to raise.

Anyway, here are my questions.

#1: Why, in Wisconsin, were we unable to vote out Senator Ron Johnson? Is it because Mandela Barnes was seen as too liberal? Is it because some folks apparently split their vote between Tony Evers (D, who retained his position as Governor) and Johnson?

Johnson acts like a buffoon. He says and does things that just don’t make any sense at all. He’s made Wisconsinites look like a bunch of hicks for the past twelve years, and apparently we’re about to be stuck with him for another six years in the US Senate providing the upcoming canvass (where results are finalized; it’s a recount, roughly) doesn’t hold any major surprises. (Usually it doesn’t.)

I’ve watched Johnson and what he does now for twelve years. He’s a very wealthy man who seemingly doesn’t care about anyone’s opinion but his own, and that’s poisonous when it comes to being a public servant. What the state of WI voters want seems irrelevant to him, and that’s why I voted against him.

#2: Why did we end up with a status quo election? Is it because voters were worried that chaos would ensue if we didn’t send back the same — or mostly similar — bunch of folks that were already there?

#3: How can we get along with one another — Democrat, Independent, Republican — if we can’t agree on what the facts are anymore?

This last is very worrisome to me, and it’s bothered me ever since former POTUS Donald Trump’s advisor Kellyanne Conway used the term “alternative facts.”

There is no such thing. There are just facts, and non-facts. (Lies, errors, call it what you will.)

Look. I am all for diversity of opinion. I don’t mute people unless they’ve done/said something so egregious, there’s no way I can possibly put up with it. (Some have called me “too nice for my own good.” That’s almost certainly true.) I listen to people because I want to know what they think. (If I just wanted to know what I thought, well, I’d be like Senator Johnson. No thanks.) I want to know, in other parts of the country, what the big issues are. What is vexing other folks? Why? How can they be helped, or is there anything I can do, as a citizen, to help them?

That’s what I try to do.

But when a man complained that I supposedly don’t call out “hate speech” from Democrats…as someone did on my Facebook page recently…I don’t know what the Hell to do about that.

Now, let’s talk about “hate speech” for a moment. Is it stuff that puts down Republicans that this person was upset with? (If so, that’s not hate speech. That’s just a different opinion.) Is it discussions about how “all” R voters are a bunch of hicks? (I’d disagree with that assumption.) Is it discussions that some folks continue to not abide the former POTUS Donald Trump (also called 45, also called “the former guy”) that are upsetting this gentleman? (Again, people have a right to their opinion.) Is it when people get upset that a bunch of folks who continue to believe the 2020 election was “rigged” ran for office and campaigned that if they won, there’d never be another Democrat winning an election again, that people got upset about it? (We saw this in Wisconsin with former gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels.)

I’ve said in various places that I disagree when a politician says something stupid, much less something actively hateful. That’s because I don’t like hate.

I think we are on this Earth to somehow get above that. We’re supposed to learn, change, and grow, and we can’t do these things if we won’t talk to one another.

I also think it’s very, very sad that I must spell this out. But that’s where we are.

My view is very simple, here. I can’t stand dishonesty or deceit. I’ve seen some elections I’ve deeply questioned, that have troubled me. But what I did, at the time, was to be one of the folks observing the recount. That allayed my fears considerably, and I suggest this to anyone who continues to have doubts about what their own local election officials are doing.

I believe in “trust, but verify.” (Ronald Reagan said this, and it’s true.)

So, I understand why someone is angry, at least in part, when their candidate loses. (I understand how frustrating it is to still be represented by Ron Johnson, as I said before.) I understand why someone would feel that the worst excesses of any given party need to be called out…and even why someone wouldn’t like it when all of one particular party seem tarred with one brush.

Let me make it plain. I do not believe every R voter out there is a racist. (That’s stupid.) I also don’t believe that every R voter out there is an election-denier, or someone who thinks elections should be “overseen” by just one party. They definitely shouldn’t be, because the temptation there would be far, far too great to do whatever the Hell that one party liked, and the good of the overall populace be damned.

That way lies autocracy, folks. I am against that with every fiber of my being.

I am against gerrymandering for the same reason. That allows one party to get an “edge” over another party — in this state, it’s the Rs over the Ds, but in IL, it’s more the Ds over the Rs as I understand it — and again, that does not serve the voters whatsoever.

When you can’t vote people out because the district they “represent” is overloaded by one party or another, that’s a recipe for disaster. That’s why I support independent boards doing the redistricting instead (as they do in California and used to do in Iowa). That way, if you have a politician who’s not listening and worse yet isn’t doing the people’s business, you can get them the Hell out of there.

But more on the frustration, as that’s important.

There’s a good reason as to why people are angry, frustrated, and deeply upset: they don’t think their voices are being heard. That doesn’t matter if you live in South Dakota, say, or Illinois, or New York City, or Timbuktu. Every single person I’ve spoken to, regardless of party, does not believe they are being heard.

I read, recently, about something called the “Greater Idaho” movement. There are voters in Oregon who are deeply frustrated that they are never listened to about anything. These are farmers, ranchers, fishermen, etc., who feel they have no voice in the Oregon Legislature. So what they’ve done, instead, is start this “Greater Idaho” movement. They’re willing to see if Idaho will admit their counties, which are all right-leaning, so they can actually be heard by a state Legislature.

The last time anyone tried something like this was the late 1980s/early 1990s. There were four counties in Kansas who had never voted to join the state, but were annexed anyway. These four counties were considering becoming part of Colorado, at the time…it ended up as a stalemate, but the frustration was real.

My guess is that the “Greater Idaho” movement will end up the same way, but it was started for the same reason I’ve already given above: these people are not being heard, and they’re tired of it.

I don’t blame them at all for that. I hope their state will start listening to them.

Anyway, my point is very simple. I believe in diversity, freedom of thought, free and fair elections, and I believe in the ideals that founded the United States. I wish we were feeling better about ourselves as a nation, and as a people, so I didn’t actually need to state these very things.

P.S. On a wholly separate note, I continue to recover — very slowly — from what I think is the flu. Responses may be slowed due to that reason.

Sunday Musings: The Empathy Gap

Recently, I’ve thought a great deal about one thing. Empathy.

Why? Well, the United States, as a country, don’t seem to be showing a lot of it lately.

Whether it’s because of how individuals have handled Covid-19, or because of the ascension of politicians with more mouth than brain (including current US Reps Marjorie Taylor Greene and Nicole Boebert), it seems trendy now to behave badly and blame it on someone else.

I read a lengthy article in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel recently about this very thing. (I am not linking to it because it was for “subscribers only,” meaning unless you have a subscription, they won’t let you see it.) It talked about the differences between what good, empathetic behavior is and bad behavior, and discussed how two decades — the 1970s, or “Me Decade,” and the 1980s, or the “Greed is Good” Decade — have changed public discourse for the worse.

I’m not sure it was just because of those two decades, mind you. But it is possible that folks who were born in those decades changed their parenting style, and their kids grew up with fewer “guard rails” against bad behavior along with perhaps lesser consequences for said bad behavior.

I think most of us have seen someone treated badly because of Covid-19. Whether it’s a customer cussing out a store employee for wearing a mask (as they mostly have had to do due to local or state regulations), someone being happy that another person who’s died because they didn’t get the vaccine and felt they wouldn’t get sick (schadenfreude, in other words), or a store employee (in a state/county that does not require masks) ask someone to remove their mask because said store employee didn’t like it, there seems to be very little tolerance for any behavior besides one’s own.

I have a very good friend who went to the post office recently where she lives. The clerk there is an anti-masker and possibly also an anti-vaxxer and complained when my friend (who is immunocompromised) did not remove her mask after she was asked. She explained this, but the clerk did not care. It was all she could do to stay in the post office until her business was done due to being so upset.

I have another friend who lives in Florida. He is also immunocompromised, but his doctors believe he should not be vaccinated. (I’m not sure why.) He has kept himself from just about everyone now for almost three years. It’s been a tough life, as he is gregarious and loves to talk with people about just about anything. But he’s risking his life with or without a mask, and as he lives in Florida — where people have disdained wearing masks even at the worst of the Covid-19 breakout stages — he sees no other way but to stay home, live quietly, and hope Covid goes away.

Other than the nurse who comes in to give him treatments, he sees no one. He hears many, mind, as there are people roundly cursing each other out at his apartment complex at all hours. (That we’re all under much more stress due to Covid is a given, granted.) But he sees no one.

There hasn’t been anyone to bring him food, or talk to him outside (making sure there’s no one around at the time so it’ll be safe for him, with a mask if he wants one, to do that), or do any of the small, kind human gestures that show empathy for someone who’s suffering, much less through no fault of his own.

(He lives too far away for me to help, or I’d have already visited. But I digress.)

I could give more examples, but I’ll stop there because I think my point’s been made.

You, as an individual person, should be free to lead your life any way you see fit. But you also should not be rude to someone who needs a mask even if mask mandates have been relaxed; you should not be rude to someone because her autistic son cannot wear a mask; you should not be rude to someone, like me, who has asthma and has great difficulty and distress wearing a mask but tries anyway because of two parents “of a certain age.” You also should not be so rude as to say, “I’m glad he’s dead” when you hear of a prominent anti-vaxxer dying due to Covid.

Why has it become so controversial to say these things, anyway? (To say what I just said, mind. Not to be outright rude, which seems perfectly fine to many for reasons I just don’t understand.) Why must empathy now be politicized, as if it’s something bad to actually care about others?

What I want this Sunday — not to mention every single day of my life — is for everyone to take a moment and step back. Realize that we are all human. We are all deserving of care, empathy, trust, and love. And we should start to show the best of ourselves to others, quietly, not as an Instragrammable moment but because our shared humanity deserves that.

If we can do that, the world will become a much better place.

WordPress Ate My Blog, and…

Folks, I had a very long blog post about the First Amendment to the United States, and how important it is to believe in freedom of speech. But something happened during the “auto-save” process, and WordPress ate half my blog. So I decided to trash the blog, and start over.

I do believe in freedom of speech, even when it’s speech I don’t agree with at all. No matter how vile the speech is, it is protected under the First Amendment.

So, going back to the events of January 6, 2021, here are my thoughts:

1. The protestors carrying flags and chanting who did not go into the Capitol building were exercising their freedom of speech along with their freedom of assembly.

2. The protestors who stayed on the sidewalk and chanted, or sang, or prayed, while others went into the Capitol and trashed it (among other things) are not to blame for other people’s actions. Again, they were exercising their freedoms of speech and assembly. More power to them.

3. Those who crossed the line from speech into action, and stormed the Capitol in Washington, D.C., should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Five people died that day, including one police officer. Millions of property damage was done, too. And if not but for the grace of God/dess, it’s possible that the protestors who were in the Capitol Building shouting “Hang Mike Pence!” might’ve gotten their wish.

So, the upshot of all of that is, if all you did was yell “Hang Mike Pence!” but did not go into the Capitol, your free speech is protected. But if you yelled “Hang Mike Pence!” and then went into the Capitol, vandalized some stuff, and/or roughed up some police officers (quite a few were injured; one lost an eye; one was nearly crushed to death in a door), you should be prosecuted.

This does not seem like rocket science, to me.

Sunday Musings Regarding the United States, Division, and the Upcoming Election

It’s been awhile since I last wrote one of these Sunday Musings posts, so I thought it was time for another. Enjoy!

I’ve been thinking a lot about how the United States came to be so divided. (The idea that we’re supposed to be united despite our divisions and differences really seems to have gotten lost beside the wayside, lately.) And the only thing I can come up with is, some people — maybe the vast majority of people — want to believe in their own version of reality.

Now, you might be asking, “Barb, what the Hell are you on about this time?”

It’s simple, really. Most people, whether their politics are conservative or liberal, want to believe whatever it is that makes them feel the best about themselves and their circumstances. So whatever narrative they see has a great deal to do with their own lives, and nothing else need apply.

Should it be this way?

I’d like to say no. Because facts are what they are, and you can’t choose to only believe some facts rather than others. And optimally, everyone should do a good deal of research into political candidates — almost the same as if you’re vetting a personal friend for a job you’re not sure they’re up for, but want them to try for anyway.

The thing is, here in the United States, and perhaps around the world as well, there are many people working more than one job. Or they are working way more than forty hours at the one job they have, to support their families.

In other words, they are exhausted, and they don’t have time to do the research if they wanted to. So they pick whomever they think they can hate the least, and call it a day.

While I understand exhaustion quite well — having fibromyalgia as I do, that comes with the territory — I still wish people would challenge their own assumptions more often. Because that way, it’s easier to get out of ruts; in fact, if you do challenge your own assumptions regularly, you may never fall into a rut at all.

I also wish that we could somehow get back to where we were ten or fifteen years ago, where people didn’t choose their friends solely by whether or not they fit their political beliefs. There are so many things that unite us that it pains me to see unnecessary divisions making things worse.

It’s almost like people thought after 2008, when Barack Obama was elected, that everything would now be wonderful. (You may remember that I conscientiously objected at the time to that point of view.) And because it didn’t happen, they grew disenchanted with anyone who still wanted to see hope in any form.

Yet somehow, we went from the cult of personality that Barack Obama had about him to the cult of personality that Donald Trump now embodies. And we went from “Yes, we can!” to “Hell no, we can’t!”

What I would like to see, going forward, is that we all realize we have more in common with each other than not. We want safe streets. Good quality, affordable health care. Schools that do more than just warehouse kids, and actually teach them usable skills. And I’d like to see us have a dialogue that shows we’re paying attention to one another, rather than just dismissing everything the other side (or sometimes, sides) says out of hand because it doesn’t automatically fit our worldview.

That said, some things are flat-out wrong. Racism is one of them. Sexism is another. Unnecessary fear regarding the LGBTQ community is another.

But you know what is the most wrong of all? Stupidity.

So I urge you, today, to reach out to your friends, neighbors, and others. Try to see where you have things in common. Do good things for one another, if you can. Or at least listen and care if you can’t.

Regardless of who you vote for, you need to start looking to re-form a community around yourself. So we can all feel like we matter, and are important.

That’s what being a citizen of the greatest nation on Earth is supposed to be about, rather than “us vs. them.”

Voting, Nightmare Scenarios, and the 2020 Election

Folks, this past week, for me at least, has been one of great dismay.

After the death of ground-breaking Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Republican Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell (R-KY), didn’t even wait a full day before saying “her seat will be filled as soon as possible.” (This is my best paraphrase of the many things he did say.) As I said in my last blog, this is contrary to what McConnell did the last time a Justice — in that case, Antonin Scalia — passed away in an election year, as at that time he more or less filibustered the nomination of then-President Obama’s choice, Merrick Garland, for the Supreme Court.

But that wasn’t all that was so disheartening out of Washington, DC, this past week.

Nope. We also got a very oddly worded, meandering comment by President Donald Trump (a Republican, in case anyone has forgotten), saying that he felt the ballots are a “disaster” and that he shouldn’t have to worry about leaving. (This was in response to a question about the peaceful transfer of power, something that has been a hallmark of American democracy since its inception.)

Because of that, a good friend of mine discussed with me the following scenario, which comes straight out of the Constitution: Trump is apparently leaning hard on Article 2, which would in effect throw the election (if disputed) to the House of Representatives. Every state there gets one and only one vote. And there are more Republican-led states than not, so it’s quite possible that even with a landslide victory for Joe Biden (a Democrat), Trump could still conceivably stay in office.

My response to this, aside from incredulousness of course, was as following: “If there’s a landslide for Biden and his VP pick, Kamala Harris, there’s likely to be a Democratic Senate along with a Democratic House. Trump will be impeached in short order, for pulling something like that, and he’ll have bought himself a maximum of six to nine months. What’s the point of that?”

My friend assured me that to Trump, every day in office counts. It gives him and his family more chances to amass power (and, I suppose, wealth). And, of course, the Constitution doesn’t allow for any sitting President to be arrested on any charges, anywhere in the world…mostly because the rather naïve belief was that anyone terrible enough to be charged with anything would be impeached in short order, and then no longer out of reach of the legal system.

(Ah, the innocence of the Constitutional framers. They could not have conceived of the situation of 2020, nor the naked partisanship of the Republican Party as led by Trump and McConnell. They knew naked partisanship, mind; how not? But they didn’t necessarily understand that some people are just immoral, and will grasp power for its own ends just because. Or maybe they did, but figured there would be enough good people to oppose such a power grab in the Senate…but woe betide us, as there aren’t.)

The idea that my vote, your vote, your parents’ votes, your friends’ votes, and even your enemies’ votes won’t be likely to be fairly counted because counting the votes is not in the current President’s best interest bothers me greatly. It is undemocratic and unAmerican. And it also flies in the face of Trump’s followers, because most of them voted for him believing he would be a capable President and behave as Presidents do…that is, if they get voted out, they leave, peaceably, and let the next President take over.

Even though Trump did not win the popular vote last time, he did win in the Electoral College. This still reflects that, at that time, Trump was respecting conventional norms; his was a legal way through, and also an ethical way through. It wasn’t a preferred way through — most Presidents prefer to win the popular vote and the electoral college, if they can — but it was both legal and ethical. And he did win many votes, though not the most, as Hillary Clinton led by over three million votes overall.

In the situation I’ve described, where the election is not in doubt and Biden has won by swamping Donald Trump, but there are many legal challenges — so many, a slate of electors from each state cannot be chosen in a timely manner — we’d be thrown to Article 2 of the Constitution. And while that is completely legal, it is not ethical. Nor is it moral, to overturn the overwhelming will of the voters like that, which is why up until now it’s never been tried.

This year, it may be, though. And the prospect of it vexes me greatly.

The thing is, something tells me this is being thrown out as a red herring. It’s being thrown out to suppress the will of the voters. It’s being thrown out there to make people believe their vote doesn’t matter. That nothing they do will ever matter. And that there’s no way to overcome the Trump Machine/Republican Party as led by Trump/McConnell…even by voting them out.

My belief, therefore, is that we MUST vote. (I want everyone to vote, even if you still believe Trump is wonderful in every way and deserves a second term despite his obvious mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States.) We have to vote. We have to show what our will is, and trust that there are enough good people out there to overcome the bad ones — whomever or whatever they may be, and whomever and whatever they try to do — and do our civic duty despite all efforts to depress us and make us too despondent to do anything at all.

And if worse comes to worst, and Trump stays in due to using Article 2 of the Constitution to blatantly disrespect the will of the people, I’ll have to trust that somehow, some way, the ship will be righted. And that we will not slide further into autocracy, much less a straight-up dictatorship, with a second, undeserved in this scenario, presidency.

What do you think of my nightmare scenario? Tell me about it in the comments!

Justice Ginsburg Dies, and the U.S. Goes Crazy…**

**at least, the internet world. (Are there any others? /sarcasm)

The last few days have been surreal. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a trailblazing lawyer and U.S. Supreme Court judge, has passed away at age 87. She was possibly one of the few jurists in the nation most people trusted; they might not like her, or like her viewpoints, but they trusted her to come at them from a judicial/legal standpoint. And her death is a great loss to the nation, much less to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS, for short).

“But Barb, all you’ve explained so far is that Justice Ginsburg has died. What is this part about the United States supposedly going crazy about?”

It’s simple, dear readers. She was needed at this time and place. Despite her advanced age, and her long-time battle with cancer, her clear-headed nature and trustworthiness were a Godsend for the American people. Her death means that the current President of the United States (POTUS, for short), Donald Trump, can now appoint a new Supreme Court Justice even though there’s only forty-five days until the next presidential election.

Which wouldn’t seem that bad, until you consider your recent history.

In 2016, the Republican Party forced then-President Obama to hold a SCOTUS seat vacant until the next election. They did nothing for nine months, at all. And they said it was because they wanted the people to decide.

Now, the Republican Party, which is in power, feels they can replace a judge on the Supreme Court with less than two months to go until the next election. Their reasoning (rather spurious, to my mind) is that last time, the Rs held only the Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives, not the Presidency. This time, they hold the Senate and the Presidency (but not the House).

If you fail to see why this is acceptable, join the club.

**The only thing that comes to mind when I think about this whole situation is Disturbed’s song “Down with the Sickness.” (Just felt I should throw that in there. Moving along…)

Me, I see it as rank hypocrisy. And here’s why…Mitch McConnell, who was the Senate Majority Leader in 2016 and is still the Senate Majority Leader today, seemingly wants to do this so fast because Trump could lose this election. But if McConnell and the Rs can ram through another judge before Trump leaves office, they can affect laws for decades to come.

And power, after all, comes before consistency. /sarcasm (mine)

Note that it usually takes far more than forty-five days to find a qualified person (usually someone who’s already a judge, but not always), get that person through Senate confirmation (even when your party is in power, this can be an ordeal), and onto SCOTUS. But who the Hell cares about finding the right justice for SCOTUS, when it’s all about the power?

(And yes, this time, I wrote that without any sarcasm at all.)

I can tell you one thing. The people of the United States know what hypocrisy looks like. Tastes like. Smells like. And most, regardless of party, do not want to partake in hypocritical things or use hypocritical means for any reason.

Why? Because most of them have endured this in their own lives. And they know it’s wrong.

Plus, they know that in general, no one party stays in power forever. And if one party — in this case, the Rs — treats the other party (in this case, the Ds) badly, that means it’s justified — or at least justifiable — if the Ds later treat the Rs with as much vitriol and condescension as they’ve just seen themselves.

Because make no mistake about it. Justice Ginsburg died yesterday evening. And today, McConnell has already said he will get President Trump’s nominee a fair hearing. In the next forty-five days.

Yep. “Down with the sickness” is the only thing that keeps going through my head, here. Moving on…

Anyway, I do not believe in hypocrisy. And I do think it should take any party or any person more than forty-five days to put a new judge on SCOTUS as it’s a lifetime appointment.

And in the midst of all this, Justice Ginsburg’s remarkable life is being given short shrift. As is her stated final wish, as dictated by her granddaughter, which was, “Please wait to fill my seat until after the election.”

To say I find that infuriating, much less maddening, much less frustrating, much less despair and anguish-inducing, is an extreme understatement.

So, for those of you trying not to go crazy right now, I want you to think of this. The wishes of the dead usually are respected if they make sense. And in this case, they do.

I also want you to think about this: We, as people, need to stand up and say, “No more of this nonsense, please.” Because if it’s wrong for a Democratic President to fill a SCOTUS seat in an election year (nine months out), it’s just as wrong for a Republican President to fill a SCOTUS seat in an election year (forty-five days out).

And if this is allowed, don’t come back to me and say, when the next Democratic President takes office, “Oh, he shouldn’t do that! It’s hypocritical!” Because you’ll have ventured all your dignity, ethics, and morals already, and you’ll have no philosophical “leg” to stand on. At all.

The More Things Change…

…the more they stay the same. (Yes, I’m borrowing from the famous French saying.)

It’s September. It may be 2020, but it’s still September. And September is the month I lost my beloved husband, Michael.

I’ll never forget that day. It is seared into my memory in so many ways, and has shaped who I’ve become. It is a part of me, and I am a part of it…that I tell myself, daily, that Michael would not want me to dwell on the nature of his passing matters not. Because I was there.

I wake up, even now, and reach for him. I wonder what he’d think of this, that, and the other. And I’m glad he’s not lived to see the deep, divisive partisan divide in the United States that’s gotten so bad, we can no longer agree on what the facts are if we’re in different parts of the country. Or in different political parties. (Or worst of all, both.)

Michael believed that you needed to make your argument logically. Factually. With care. With concern. And that if you couldn’t do all those things, it wasn’t much of an argument. (That he’d hold someone like that in contempt is a given.)

That the current President of the United States is a man who can’t do any of those things, or worse, doesn’t even see the point to wanting to make a logical argument about anything (why use logic, when appeals to emotion and unreason will do instead?), would vex Michael as greatly as it’s vexed me.

It’s almost as if we live in Bizarro World. Everything we thought we knew about people, that they could use reason and logic along with compassion and empathy, has turned upside-down.

(Mind, in many ways, I’ve lived in my own, personal Bizarro World since the day Michael died. But that’s just me. Now, back to the blog, already in progress…)

Instead, these days, it’s seemingly all about who can scare everyone else the most.

I don’t understand it. I will never understand it. But I will continue to work against it, for as long as I possibly can.

Michael would expect no less. (And I certainly expect no less out of myself anyway, Michael or no Michael.)

Just Trying to Get By…

As the blog title says, the mood around Chez Caffrey tonight is exactly that: trying to get by.

I can’t ignore the stresses in the world. They bother me. And I can do so little about them.

For example, I hate it that the people in Hong Kong, who are protesting for democracy, are not being backed up by the United States in word or deed. (I don’t want the U.S. to go to war with China. But this is a situation where diplomacy might’ve done some good. Yet the Congress, as well as the President, remains for the most part eerily silent.)

I also am unhappy by much of what I’ve seen and heard regarding the impeachment inquiry in the U.S. Congress. Everything I’ve read (and I have read the entire 300-page report put out by the Congress yesterday) shows that President Trump seems to believe that Presidents are like Kings, and can do whatever they like. I can’t abide that. And I don’t understand why others can.

Mind, I believe in the rule of law. If the Senate, which probably will get the impeachment from the House sooner or later (the House hasn’t taken a vote yet), refuses to carefully ponder the evidence, I will be extremely unhappy. And if they do what Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) has already said he will and refuse to even read the evidence, that will make me furious.

These people are not being paid to duck the evidence. They are being paid to do what is in the best interests of the country.

Not their party. The country.

Anyway, I mention all of this because it does weigh on my mind. And I can do so little about it.

What I can do, mind, is write about it. (Which you see, for what good it does.) I can register people to vote when my health is strong enough. I can also weigh the evidence, when it fully comes out, in my own mind, with my own knowledge of the U.S. Constitution, and decide for myself what I’d do if I were in the Senate.

(Hint, hint: I do not believe in party over country. I believe in what John McCain did. Country over party. Or as John Quincy Adams said, “Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone.”)

Mind, if the evidence ultimately isn’t there, then it’s not. (Though it’s hard to believe right now there won’t be enough evidence to show that. And if you doubt me, go read that report and put “Obama” in there instead of Trump. Would you think this behavior is OK then? But I digress.)

The evidence should be heard, should be weighed, should be measured…and if the folks in the Senate who are apparently blinded by Donald Trump’s cult of personality can’t figure out that what the current president has done will be used as a measuring stick for all presidents to follow, then they are idiots. (And should be voted out of office forthwith.)

Anyway, I see all this, and wonder what in the Hell the point is. There’s so little I can affect. And it bothers me.

But all I can do, from day to day, is be my best self.

(And so should you, even though it may seem completely pointless to try.)

So, I’ll keep on trying to get by. And as I do that, I’ll continue to work on my writing, my editing, my music, and whatever other abilities I have that can do some people some good somewhere…as that’s all I know how to do.

——

P.S. We still do live in a free society. I am grateful for this. I am able to say what I feel, in a way I feel is right, and not be hauled off to jail for doing so.

May it continue ever so.

Political Thoughts on a Friday Afternoon

The national mood (much less mine) has seemed apocalyptic. The politics get more polarized; the POTUS bloviates and prevaricates, then deserts long-term allies in a shameful move; the politics get even more polarized, where some people for some reason still think this POTUS walks on water (and most of the rest realize not only that he doesn’t, but none of us do).

The mood in my state of Wisconsin isn’t that great, either. It’s fall, and it’s chilly. Our state politics have been polarized a long time, and that’s not going to change anytime soon. But worse yet is the feeling that very few elected officials are looking out for us at any level…and that this isn’t going to change unless we vote as many of the current crop of politicians out as possible.

(Except for those few who do seem to have a shred of public service somewhere deep inside, that is. They can stay.)

I can’t help but see these things, and be appalled. I care that we get the best representation possible at all levels, from honorable people doing their best to figure out how to run things the very best way they can. Not for greed or graft. Not for personal gain in any way. But because it’s the right thing to do.

Maybe I’m still an idealist at heart. Perhaps I am.

But we should be doing better than this. We deserve to have open, rational dialogues about the tough issues facing our world, much less this country and this state. We need to know the hard facts. (Not alternative facts, whatever the Hell they are.) We need to understand that traditional conservative values about saving money and paying down the national (and state) debt and not spending money on frivolous things like gold-plated faucets in executive washrooms are good things. And we also need to understand that traditional, small-l liberal values of freedom, justice, and the dignity of human worth are also good things.

We’ve become so polarized in the US that it’s possible to say one thing, and depending on what political party one belongs to, people hear it two ways.

That’s just wrong.

We are all human beings. We all deserve the chance to figure ourselves out. And we deserve the chance to live in a peaceful world, one where we don’t desert our long-term allies at the drop of a hint or the whim of an erratic and unskilled POTUS.

Our Congress, and our state government, on down to city and local governments, needs to start working for us. Rather than above us, besides us, or in spite of us.

I don’t know if we can get there anytime soon. But we have to start trying.

Otherwise, we’ll continue to get the neglectful, wasteful, and spiteful government we have now. And that is completely nonsensical.

When People Disagree: A Rant

Folks, if you’ve been following my blog for the past few days, you may have noticed that there was a disagreement between me and a long-time reader of my blog. Over politics, of all things…the most fraught subject in the United States, partly because everyone seemingly has made up his or her mind already. Worse yet, most of the folks I know of any political persuasion won’t change whatever their initial snap judgment was in the first place, and thus we stay stalled out.

Nothing gets done, because we can’t even agree on the basics anymore.

I don’t know what to say about this, except that it saddens me.

In this case, my former reader was a Trump supporter. I am not, and never have been. That said, I do read George Will (a conservative columnist) regularly, watch Shep Smith regularly (the best newsman on TV, and he works on Fox News), and sample a number of conservative blogs every week, including Hugh Hewitt’s (a Trump supporter and radio host).

Do I agree with much of what any of them say? Hell, no, I don’t**. But I owe it to myself to find out what they’re saying, because sometimes I do agree with a little here and there. (And every great once in a while, I find myself in agreement with someone like longtime Republican strategist Rick Wilson. Granted, he’s a #NeverTrump guy. But he still is a true conservative, and thus doesn’t have a ton in common with me in some ways.)

And one thing I do know we all agree on, whether it’s Hewitt or Will or Wilson, is that we need to believe our government works for us. Rather than them doing whatever the Hell they want (or don’t); rather than our Congresscritters (and other governmental folks) acting like pigs at the trough and getting all they can, as long as they can; rather than them acting like complete and utter idiots, out of touch with people in the middle and lower classes (so they can’t possibly make decent laws, having no idea of what the true issues are).

The way to find consensus is to read exactly what’s written, and not impart what we think the other person is writing instead. The former reader decided no matter what I said about politics that I hated Trump so much, “Trump was Hitler.” (He said this in several comments.) And I said no such thing.

In fact, what I did say was, “I don’t like Trump. I don’t trust him. I don’t think he’s a good POTUS (president of the United States). But he’s not Hitler.”

I should’ve gone further, though. Which is why I’m writing this right now.

Many dictators and authoritarian-types who’ve come to power shut down the freedom of expression as the very first thing they do. Whether they are from China or Chile, Venezuela or Uganda, or anywhere else that’s featured dictatorial rule in the past century (including Cuba), the one thing a dictator can’t handle is the freedom to say, “I don’t like that guy, and here’s why.”

With all of Trump’s faults — and he does have many — he has not done that. He’s not even tried to do that. And I think one of the reasons the hard-core Trump supporters out there (including the former reader of my blog) get so frustrated is that some members of the media have worried incessantly that Trump will do that. And worse, some of the most loudmouthed members of the chattering class believe it’s only a matter of time, and have already decided Trump is guilty of suppressing freedom of the press right now.

Know, please, that I am not among those folks.

But back to the matter at hand. It isn’t fair to impart motives to my writing that do not exist. That frustrates the Hell out of me. As a writer, I try to be as blunt and to the point as I can, and make it blindingly obvious what I think when I’m writing my blogs or anything of a nonfiction nature. (Fiction, by definition, is different. And you have to take different tactics there as a writer to do the job. But I digress.) I do that on purpose, because I do not want to be misunderstood.

What I do know, though, is this: If we can’t agree even on how to disagree, we’re in big trouble.

I realize many people, myself included, are worried about all sorts of things, big and small; that said, we have to at least be willing to agree to disagree sometimes, and be civil about doing it. And not just storm off in a huff when you’re not getting your point across, or you don’t particularly want to agree to disagree, either. (That’s something the US Congress does very well. We, as people, should not.)

My belief, overall, is that you don’t have to agree with me. (In fact, I hope you don’t always agree with me. How boring would it be to have a bunch of echo chambers around all the time?) But you do have to be civil about your disagreement, and you really should try to see what the words actually are, rather than what you think they are.

End rant.

——–

**I like Shep Smith’s newscasts, and I agree with how he presents the news. He is objective and principled. I like that. I wish we had a lot more of it.