Trump's Tactics - We've Seen this Story Before

Sensing something was amiss with my party in 2010, I decided to run for a seat on our county GOP central committee, hoping to restore some sanity. I ran and won - only to learn just how off the rails the party really was - and how determined many seemed to be to take it even further to the edges of extreme.

I watched candidates seeking endorsements shouted down as they tried to provide thoughtful explanations of their views on capital punishment. I saw conservative Christians sharing photos of their AR-15s the way some share photos of their grandchildren¹. I was personally attacked online for taking one member to task for referring to Muslims as “ragheads.” When the president of the Conservative Women of Ohio posted that we should not trust an evil President Obama when he announced the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden,  I was swarmed by an angry online mob when I simply cautioned against letting hatred overwhelm reason (I was effectively told that we are right to hate). Likewise, I was castigated for defending our “corrupt government” when all I did was use actual government data to refute wildly inaccurate claims regarding congressional benefits. I was criticized by GOP activists on Facebook for my use of “artful facts.”

These weren’t the railings of some crazy old uncle, deep into his bourbon, parroting what he’d heard on the extreme end of conservative media, but elected GOP officials and local party leaders tasked with selecting and endorsing candidates for local, state and federal offices, and their followers. Their craziness today would be our government’s craziness tomorrow. The anger, the disinterest in thoughtful debate and the complete disregard for facts left me so concerned that as my term came to a close in 2014, I outlined a novel where a media mogul, a business titan and a demagogue exploit that anger to foment a civil war fought by anti-government militia members led by a rogue general and backed by hard-right Christians, the NRA and Tea Party activists seeking to “take our country back.”

I meant it as a cautionary tale.

Meanwhile, in April that same year, during an online discussion on how demagogues rise, I wrote of how the Hitlers of the world “latch onto real or perceived hardships, find a scapegoat to blame them on, draw an ‘us vs. them’ battle line, then look for an opportunity to justify conflict to vanquish the enemy to the benefit of the ‘righteous’. Be ever vigilant for parallels.”




Hitler references always risk labels of hyperbole. Still, if there are circumstances where a Hitler can seduce a nation as he did in Germany, then certainly a demagogue presenting a seemingly less dangerous face could do the same elsewhere. Given what I'd witnessed within GOP circles, vigilance seemed warranted.

For one, we should never kid ourselves that Americans are somehow congenitally immune to the hate that makes the siren call of demagogues so seductive. One need only study the history of tacitly-sanctioned, mob-rule lynchings in the South to come to such a conclusion. The idea that “it can’t happen here” had already been proven to be false.

Of greater and more immediate concern was the level of vitriol that had become commonplace in conservative circles, driven by a conservative media that had found a profitable business model in dismissing rational debate in favor of stirred grievances that fed the irrationality displayed by my local GOP. Those grievances took on, among others, Muslims, immigrants and the United States government itself, with Tea Party activists sporting Gadsden “Don’t Tread On Me” flags railing against a government perceived as corrupt and overbearing. Christians came to believe they were being persecuted, while NRA fund-raising letters warned of “jack-booted government thugs” coming to take away our guns.

A nation that had proven it was not immune to ethnic hatred was simmering in an angry witch’s brew, stirred by a coven filled with names like Coulter, Carlson, Limbaugh and LaPierre. The aggrieved were being fed an endless supply of scapegoats. All that was missing was a demagogue to exploit the “us versus them” narrative.

Enter Donald Trump, descended from Trump Tower in 2015 to announce his candidacy for the U.S. presidency, making his now famous declaration, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us [sic]. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists...”

There it was - us versus them - in a single sentence: “They” are not sending “you.”

At that point, exactly 300 words into his candidacy, I was sure he had permanently and irrevocably disqualified himself as a candidate for the presidency. He was drawing straight from the playbook used by demagogues across the ages, trading on public fears for political gain. Surely, despite what I’d witnessed inside the GOP, we would see through his naked appeal to the worst in us.

What I did not know, however - what none of us knew at the time - was that the year before, just as I was posting my 2014 call for vigilance, Christopher Wylie of Cambridge Analytica was being introduced to “Steve from America.” Steve was Steve Bannon, and over the next year he would work with Cambridge Analytica to test market phrases like “deep state,” “drain the swamp” and “build the wall” to determine their effectiveness, and more importantly, identify the characteristics of Facebook users with whom those phrases resonated.

But it went further. As reported by Wylie in his whistleblowing book, “Mindf*ck,” Bannon and Cambridge Analytica began testing Facebook messages to determine just how deep racial animosity ran and how far people could be pushed. Questions asking whether blacks were capable of succeeding in America without the help of whites, or whether they were genetically predetermined to fail, were posted to gauge underlying racial attitudes. Bannon believed that political correctness and the civil rights movement had limited what he called “free thinking” in America and sought to expose what he considered the hidden truths about race. He believed those truths were not pretty. Facebook users did not fail Steve Bannon.

“Us versus them” narratives followed, with falsely planted posts arguing that racial relations were a zero-sum game, where the more “they” take, the less “you” have, or “they” use political correctness, so “you” can not fight back. This work exploited findings in the field of neuroscience that such messages activate the same part of the brain associated with identity. Thus, attempts to criticize or contradict such hateful messages were seen as direct attacks on one’s own self, causing the effort to backfire. This is known as the Boomerang or Backfire Effect, where attempts to counter an argument actually work to reinforce the original message. Bannon had found a winning formula - a formula that relied upon the worst in human nature AND human psychology.

Before they were done, they’d created fake user groups, presented as organic but actually initiated at Bannon's direction, to organize real-world meetups in coffee shops and similar small locales designed so that users were made to believe not only that they were not alone, but that there were far more who thought like them than there actually were. By creating that illusion, these outliers felt more at ease expressing their racial animosity publicly, drawing ever larger numbers into their circle. Once the dark side was released, it took on a life of its own. Eventually, the Boomerang Effect would have Republicans embracing the term "deplorables" and in turn, the alt-right, white supremacist xenophobes it was meant to describe, as kindred spirits. GOP voters who once found Donald Trump laughable or despicable as a candidate eventually became ardent defenders and supporters, not because he had changed, but because they had.

This is why, like any malignancy where it is difficult to separate good cells from bad, it becomes so difficult to separate disdain for the man from disrespect for his supporters. The truth is that like every nation that has fallen under the spell of a demagogue who uses hate and divisiveness to achieve power, good people at first laugh, then dismiss, and finally embrace the demagogue, as attacks on him are seen as attacks on them. And once again, us versus them narratives work their dark, biological magic.

This is how societies fall prey to charismatic demagogues. We have seen it before. In fact, the CEO of SCL, Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, explicitly stated that the tactics of propagating ethnic hatred employed by Donald Trump were no different than those used by Adolph Hitler. Yes, the people who helped develop the tactics used by a future president of the United States made the direct comparison to those used in Nazi Germany. Whatever circumstances I’d observed that led me to warn of the rise of demagogues in 2014 had been identified - and weaponized - by Steve Bannon, later to be exploited by Donald Trump. But whereas I had hoped to use a cautionary tale to salve a festering wound, Steve Bannon sought to pick at the scabs. Donald Trump was his rusty scalpel. In Trump, Bannon found what he called “the perfect vessel.” Lenin’s “intelligentsia” became Trump’s deep state. Mussolini’s “drenare la palude” simply needed to be translated into English: "drain the swamp". And Hitler’s Lugenpresse (lying press) became the American president’s Fake News.

The Madness of Crowds

There is a nearly throwaway passage in the book, “The Warmth of Other Suns,” about the great migration of southern blacks out of the old south. A returning migrant visits a previously off-limits diner a few years after the end of Jim Crow and finds the experience so mundane that he wonders how such an ordinary act could have, just a few years earlier, generated enough anger and hatred that merely entering that same diner could have gotten him killed.

How, indeed.

But then we learn of the methodical exploitation of racial animosity by Steve Bannon and are reminded of our nation’s dark underbelly. We watch presidential rallies where foreigners are compared to deadly snakes, where facial expressions of supporters exhibit a mix of rage and glee, not unlike those in photos of lynch mobs of old, as chants of “Build that wall!”, “Lock her up!” and “Send them back!” echo and we’re reminded that it is a fairly straight and dangerous line from "Build that wall!" and "Send them back!" to “String them up!” And we realize, finally, that the ultimate manifestation of this anger never springs fully formed upon a society. It takes years of desensitization.

Years of being told not to trust the elites.

Years of being told not to trust the government.

Years of being told not to trust the press.

Years of being told they are not like us.

That they are bringing problems.

That the more they get, the less we have.

That they’re snakes and human scum.

That we are the righteous and they are the enemy.

That there’s only one who can fix it.

Us versus them.

This is what it looks like. This is what it always looks like. We are witnessing it now. How it will end, God only knows, but our nation has been manipulated and a party taken over. Taken over by a campaign that willfully sought to exploit hate and anger. Meanwhile, the foundations of our democracy - a free press, the rule of law, the separation of powers and faith in the loyal opposition - are being tested by a steady drip, drip, drip of acidic invective straight from the president's mouth.

Lincoln said at Gettysburg that the Civil War was testing whether a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal could long survive. This president is testing that proposition again. We can let him point to a strong economy and fool ourselves into believing all is well, but like a shining flashlight corroded from the inside, we may learn too late that what makes America work - what has made it the ideal the rest of the world aspires to be - has been debased beyond redemption from within. And the blame will lie squarely upon the shoulders of those who chose to look the other way. That is how it always happens.

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¹ One of those at the table where they were sharing photos of AR-15s later became our state senator and found himself at the center of a controversy when he suggested the U.S. may need to resort to civil war if Donald Trump lost in 2024. This mindset has run through conservative circles for some time.

Yes, Sharpiegate Could Mean the End of the World

On its face, Sharpiegate appears to be little more than perhaps the silliest moment in a sea of silliness emanating from the Trump White House. Opponents of the president find it a ridiculous example of the president’s insecurities, while his defenders see the brouhaha as both an example of fake news, claiming the president is victim rather than perpetrator of the errant sharpie markings, and further evidence of how the press and the president’s opponents seek every opportunity to attack the president, regardless how trivial the transgression. I am afraid both sides are missing the significance of this seemingly insignificant event.

First, this is nothing new. We saw it regarding the Central Park Five, where Donald Trump took out ads calling for the death penalty for the five New York youths who’d been arrested and eventually convicted of raping a Central Park jogger. only to have their convictions tossed out when a confession backed by hard DNA evidence showed they were not at fault. Despite scientific evidence to the contrary, Donald Trump has refused to admit he was wrong and continues to insist to this day that they are guilty. Fortunately, he was not in a position to do anything more than rail about their guilt in 1989. Today, his unwillingness to admit he is wrong could have far graver consequences.

Both cases also point to the president’s disregard, if not abject ignorance, of science. With regard to the Central Park Five, DNA evidence that puts the confessed rapist - and only the confessed rapist - at the scene fails to convince a man who swears by his gut instincts. In Sharpiegate, the childish extension drawn by the president (and, yes, the line was drawn by the president himself, as the Washington Post has reported), demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of what the NOAA’s hurricane forecasting cones convey. Since they represent forecasting uncertainty, they always get broader the further out they go. Yet, the president’s alteration is more a globbed-on appendage than an extension of the cone of uncertainty.

Still, this may all seem like nonsense - until one considers the possible ramifications. Let’s not forget that this president has crowed about his relationship with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. What if evidence arises that Kim continues to develop their nuclear capabilities? Will the president act upon that news in ways that are in our best interest, or will he deny it in ways consistent with his past behavior so as to preserve his self-esteem?

What about deregulation? Does he understand the science that shows the threat certain pollutants pose to workers, customers and communities? Or will he ignore those threats because he doesn’t understand them?

And what happens when his inability to admit a mistake meets his ignorance regarding facts and science? Climate change is certainly one such threat, but there are myriad others that come to mind.

Bottom line, Sharpiegate exposed both emotional and intellectual shortcomings in our president that could have dire consequences were those ever to be tested. Let us pray they are not, for if they are, prayer may be all we have.

Donald Trump: Thinking Fast & Slow or Not at All

 “Five percent think, ten percent think they think and 85% would rather die than think.” - Thomas Edison

There is a revealing moment early in HBO’s new documentary, “Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists,” where Donald Trump is shown expressing his hatred - yes, hatred - for the young men accused of the 1989 rape and beating a female jogger in New York’s Central Park. He argues that if society needs a little hate for justice to be served, then so be it. He would eventually take out full-page ads in the city’s four major papers calling for a return to the death penalty.  As New York reporter Pete Hamill, subject of the documentary, wrote at the time, “Snarling and heartless and fraudulently tough, insisting on the virtues of stupidity, it was the epitome of blind negation. Hate was just another luxury and Trump stood naked…Forget poverty and its causes…Fry them into passivity.”

It was an early insight into dark heart and empty mind of the man who would become President of the United States.

Yet as much as those early clips presaged what we’ve come to know about the future president – the rash judgment, the disregard for basic civil rights, the racial overtones as he appealed to the public’s worst instincts – it was the aftermath that is perhaps more telling and far more troubling. And we are just now seeing the cost of putting such a man in the Oval Office. We’ll get to that in a moment, but first...

The Central Park Five, as the five men Donald Trump wanted to see die would come to be known, eventually had their convictions vacated in 2002, when a convicted rapist provided an accurate and detailed confession to the crime, including non-public evidence known only by the police that could be used to confirm a confessor was knowledgeable about the case, backed up by DNA evidence that not only proved his guilt, but exonerated the Central Park Five.

Donald Trump was not moved. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, he maintained they were guilty and refused to apologize for his false accusations that helped create the mob justice mindset that surrounded their initial trial. As recently as 2016, a quarter century after the initial assault and fourteen years following their vindication, then-candidate Trump was still proclaiming their guilt, lamenting their release and criticizing the settlement they had received from the city.

This is classic Trump - react without thinking, internalize that thoughtless instinct, then refuse to let go regardless what evidence to the contrary might exist. As one White House aide states in Bob Woodward’s book Fear, “There are some things on which he’s already reached a conclusion, it doesn’t matter what you say, it doesn’t matter what arguments you offer, he’s not listening.”

This should come as no surprise. The president’s own words suggest a decision-making process absent thought or facts. Last November, on Federal Reserve interest rate hikes, he told the Washington Post, “I have a gut, and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else’s brain can ever tell me.” Regarding climate change, he said, “I have a natural instinct for science.” In neither case did he offer a basis for his opinion, nor did he indicate that he’d studied the reasoning behind the Fed’s decision or the science underlying climate change. Instead, all he had was a gut feel and he went with it. 

He’s gone with his gut many times. Consider the decisions made with little to no justification outside of sound bite reasoning:

He pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)

He pulled out of the Paris climate change accord

He pulled out of the Iran nuclear treaty

He pulled out of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty with Russia

He announced an abrupt withdrawal of our troops from Syria

The president justifies these decisions on his gut instinct and, as he told Morning Joe back in 2016, his “very good brain.” 

But science does not back him up. Despite what the president claims, and many of his supporters believe, we do not make good decisions when we go with instinct. In fact, we are far likelier to be wildly wrong when we go with our gut. And those who believe they are immune to this truth are often the worst offenders. This is a classic example of the Dunning-Kruger effect, the well-known phenomenon where people tend to overestimate their knowledge or ability, especially among people of low ability (the opposite tends to be true of high-performing people, who tend to underestimate their abilities since they are more likely to know what they don’t know or at least recognize that they probably don’t know everything about a given topic). Two quotes capture this quite well: William Butler Yeats’ observation that "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” and Henry Kissinger’s assertion that "To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it." Donald Trump would appear to fall into Kissinger’s latter category.

 Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, the famed Israeli psychologists who essentially created the field of behavioral psychology demonstrated time and again the bad decisions humans make when they go on instinct rather than data. Their work became the basis for everything from data science to Moneyball. They showed humans were so inept at making gut decisions that when asked if their work was the basis for artificial intelligence, Dr. Tversky drolly replied no, that what they studied was natural stupidity.

And yet, we have a president - a rather unintelligent one at that - who relies exclusively, proudly on his natural stupidity. We can only pray that his stupidity doesn’t become ours.

A Father's Lesson

Robert J. Szydlowski, November 15, 1930 - December 7, 2018

When my mom was sick, my dad kept imploring her to get up and keep moving. It was his sweetly desperate attempt to make sure the moving never stopped. But sweet as it may have been, I always wondered how he would respond when it was his turn. Well, let’s just say he walked the walk. Seriously, how many people confined to a wheelchair, too weak to stand – too weak to even lift their legs into the wheelchair footrests – and tied to oxygen tanks would allow, let alone demand, that they be carried downstairs to the Polish Village for lunch, spend five hours at the casino, attend mass and the Usher/Daughter Christmas party, watch the Lions, enjoy a shrimp dinner with his family and entertain his work buddies while Facetiming another in from Florida all AFTER receiving the Last Rites? His last weekend was just this side of Weekend at Bernie’s, with the only exception being that Bernie was calling the shots.

It seems only appropriate that the first person mentioned in my dad’s eulogy was my mom because like Hope and Crosby, Lennon and McCartney or Ricky and Lucy, Bob and Joanne were meant to be together - and not just in a way where the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. It was more than that. They were something special, a perfect, transcendent complement to each other.

I’ve long said that my mom taught us how we could be – finding the humor in everything, teaching us to laugh – especially at ourselves – and to understand that no matter how bad things might get, someday they would make a great story.

Meanwhile, my dad taught us how we should be. Honest, disciplined, generous, faithful, humble. Those lessons often came via his one-line lessons on life, such as the time he gave Pam money to buy school supplies. When she returned, he asked for his change, to which Pam replied, “But dad, it’s only 6 cents.” To which my dad replied, “Yeah, but whose 6 cents is it?”  The lesson? If it’s not yours, it’s not yours to decide.

Or the time he stood watching quietly as I subtly improved my lie before chipping up to the green. Only after we’d putted out and were walking off the green did he say, while looking straight ahead, “How will you ever know how good you really are if you don’t play by the rules?” The lesson: It doesn’t matter what you accomplish if you don’t do it the right way.

And sometimes those lessons were passed on in a single word that I think only six of us in this room ever heard him utter: “No.”

But more often than not, those lessons were delivered through his actions – actions that made it seem he was incapable of saying “no.” His 56 years as an usher at St. Kieren’s, quietly served. His selflessness in taking care of his mother and her sisters when all he wanted to do was travel in retirement with my mom. Or arranging for a car for a soldier recovering from war wounds in a Philippine hospital, simply because he could. We all have such stories of his selflessness.

It was the humility inherent in all those acts that was probably my dad’s defining trait. His favorite movie was Rudyard Kipling’s “Gunga Din,” and he would frequently quote the line, “You’re a better man than I, Gunga Din.” Just by chance, my favorite poem is Rudyard Kipling’s “If,” which includes the line

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch

I can think of no better way to describe my dad. He could certainly walk with kings – if he had a problem with his retirement benefits, he didn’t call HR, he called the CEO of GM. When I showed him how Jefferson’s high school stats compared with that year’s top pick in the draft, he promptly sent those stats to Dave Dombrowski, President of the Detroit Tigers. Dave Dombrowski responded, expressing his appreciation for my dad’s love of his grandson and a promise to check Jefferson out – with the Tigers’ head of scouting copied on the reply.

When he retired, he received letters from auto executives and government ministers from around the world, including one from Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of Commerce, Malcolm Baldridge, thanking him for his work on behalf of the US auto industry and the American people.

So, yes, he could walk with kings.

But, to me, far more important was his way with crowds, and nowhere could that be better seen than at a Tigers game. Anyone who ever attended a game with my dad knows he was the King of Comerica Park, greeted like a returning hero by everyone from the time he pulled into the parking lot until he got to his seat. My most memorable moment – perhaps the most memorable of all my memorable moments anywhere with dad – took place when he was taking Hannah, Jefferson and me to a game. And I am so, so grateful the kids were there to see this. As we were pulling into the lot, the parking attendant – a rather large, young, black woman – reached into the car to give my dad a hug, while telling us, “I sure do love your daddy!” That wasn’t what I was expecting, so I waited until we pulled away to ask what that was all about.

My dad simply said, “Oh, she just graduated from dental hygiene school and I got her a card and a gift. I just want to support stuff like that.”

To my dad it was no big deal. Just a simple card and gift. But it was so much more. It wasn’t the card or the gift. It was that he had taken the time and interest in a parking lot attendant, a young woman like hundreds and thousands of others we all meet and dismiss every day. But not my dad. To him, she was SOMEBODY.

That is my dad’s lesson and his legacy. King or commoner, CEO or parking lot attendant, we are no better and no worse, no more and no less, than anyone else. We all matter.

So, while Gunga Din might have been thought a better man than Cary Grant or Colonel Weed, or whoever the character was my dad quoted, I can honestly say, in the true spirit of the way you lived your life, Dad, that there was no man better than you.

When Do We Finally Say Enough?

I want to ask each of us to look into the mirror and into our own hearts. And to be honest with ourselves, if not with each other.

When Donald Trump announced his candidacy by stating those coming from Mexico were rapists and drug smugglers, assuming “some” were good people, meaning most in his mind were not good people, did you speak out against it for the lie that it was, or did you look the other way – or worse, accept that it was true?

When he referred to those arriving at our border this past summer as an “infestation,” were you repulsed by the dehumanizing ugliness of the term, disgusted that words meant to describe rodents and cockroaches were used to describe our fellow human beings, or did you look the other way – or worse, agree it was an apt description?

When we ripped families apart, sending infants and toddlers hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles from their parents, did you suffer a pain in your gut and an aching in your heart for the cruel, inhumane act done in our name, or did you look the other way – or worse, feel it was justified?

And when our government tear-gassed toddlers in diapers at our border, did you recognize we were crossing a line, where our fear and anger at others was turning us violent against mothers, fathers and children, or did you look the other way – or worse, cheer because you felt it was about time?

If you are not, finally, among the repulsed, I need to ask what it will take. When do you say enough is enough? Because this is how it happens. This is how it always happens. First we accuse others of being the source of our pain – our joblessness, our low pay, our crime. Then we paint with a broad brush, telling lies about the evil of those “others.” Then, we begin to see them as something less than human. It makes it easier to accept inhumane acts because, well, how can one be inhumane to one not really human. And all along, we look the other way, or worse we cheer. We are doing it to men, women and children along our border. It’s been done to men, women and children as long as man has created borders real and imagined between us and "them."

How else would nations that gave us Confucius and Tchaikovsky and Einstein fall under the spell  of men like Mao and Stalin and Hitler. Simple. They start with small insults, desensitizing us to the larger atrocities to come. And by the time those atrocities come, we don't recognize them for the horrors they are. We are witnessing just such a progression in our own backyard, done in our name. So the question again, is when do we say enough? Is it when we attack children. Is it when we tear them from their parents? Is it when we refer to them as vermin? Or is it when we lie about them in the first place. If you haven’t taken a stand yet, it is not too late. But if you once again choose to look the other way, understand that you are an enabler – and well on the way to becoming just as much an accomplice as anyone in history who chose to simply look the other way.

Toward a More Perfect Union

America is not perfect - it never has been. Our founding fathers understood that, which is why the Preamble to our Constitution states it's purpose is to form a more perfect union. We have been faithful to that promise, moving steadily, if haltingly toward that more perfect union. That progress has included the end of slavery, the end of separate but equal, the recognition that internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII was an abomination. It's meant recognizing Joe McCarthy for the shameless demagogue he was and Martin Luther King for the transcendent figure he was. It's meant giving women the vote, an African-American the presidency and gay Americans the right to share their life and love like everyone else.

It is the nation that saved the world from two global wars and sought no land or treasure in return, only peace and liberty for both the victorious and the vanquished. It ensured stability for trade, safe harbor for those faced with oppression, and armed reassurance to those faced with a Soviet threat across their border. As a result, the world has enjoyed the most peaceful seventy years in human history. Mankind has the United States of America, and the generosity and sacrifice of it's people, to thank for that.

The arc of our history is as clear as it is dramatic. We have an opportunity to keep America on its path and pedestal, serving as a beacon and example to the rest of the world. We can seek to be generous and open or selfish and closed. We can be confident and resolute or fearful and vindictive. We can believe in the future, or long for a past that never was. The choice we make will determine whether we continue to be the America the world seeks to follow, or a nation unrecognizable from which the world turns away. That opportunity, that choice presents itself this Tuesday.

Vote.

The Ugly Underbelly and the Right Side of History, Pt II

It's common to ask when do we start to put our foot down. Is it when a candidate smears an entire ethnic group with lies of a rapist, drug-smuggling culture? Is it when he attacks the immigrant parents of a soldier who fell in defense of his adopted country? Is it when he enables racist white supremacists by equating them with the good people protesting against them. Or is it when bombs start showing up on his opponents' doorsteps?

But perhaps we are asking the wrong question. Maybe we should be asking when do we finally stop fighting? When do we tire of standing up to hate and lies? When do we become numb and no longer realize how abnormal this behavior is? When does it become so normalized that those standing in opposition are tarred as the hateful, divisive ones?

Throughout history, tyranny has been enabled through the madness of crowds, where, in an "Emperor has no clothes" sort of way, a small group buys into an otherwise untenable lie, then bullies others into first fearing to call out the lie, then ignoring the lie, eventually forgetting the lie and finally accepting the lie as truth.

All one need do is watch the denial from conservative corners of the media regarding the legitimacy of the recent bomb attacks, the authenticity of the bombs or the true motives of the accused bomber to see the madness of crowds at work - all while the president's popularity nears its all-time high.

So the question is not when do we start to fight, but how in the world can we stop? This is not normal. It wasn't normal in 2015 or 2016 or 2017. And it is not only not normal, it is not right - no, it is flat-out wrong - in 2018. So, if you felt Donald Trump was wrong when he first announced but now think he's not that bad, understand that he hasn't changed, you have. Is that a change you are comfortable with? And, if this was a "right side of history" election in 2016, as it is proving to be a right side of history moment today, which side of history will you, your kids and your grandkids be able to say you were on when it mattered most? Will you be able to say you held true to your beliefs, your principles, or will you look back and say you were one that looked the other way, or worse, caved and enabled the further descent into Trumpian intolerance, anger and fear?

I think you know on which side I proudly stand.

My 14 Day Affirmative Challenge

I have often been told I should spend more time outlining what I believe, rather than what I oppose. Therefore, I am going to challenge myself to outline affirmatively what I believe each of the next fourteen days. While this may lean more toward principle, values and foundation than actual policy prescription, it forms the basis for whatever policy prescriptions I might support (or oppose).

Day 1
We must put aside identity politics on the left and "us vs. them" politics on the right, instead living up to our nation's founding creed that all men (and all women of all races, creeds and colors) are created equal. Let us respect what makes each of us unique, but celebrate that which unites us.

Day 2 
We must engage those we disagree with in a battle of ideas. It is fine to question the media, it is fine to question those we disagree with. It is even fine to question faith. But it is not fine to immediately dismiss those with whom we disagree simply because we disagree. Instead, we must engage them in a search for understanding and common ground using the rights to freedom of speech, press and religion enshrined in the First Amendment, otherwise we will find ourselves engaging each other using the rights enshrined in the Second. We cannot permit that for a house divided against itself cannot stand.

Day 3
We must recognize the difference between ends and means. Most of what we argue about - limited government, redistribution of wealth, free markets, regulation, taxes, spending – are simply means to an end. The ends we seek as a nation are enshrined in the Preamble to the United States Constitution:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

If we are the Constitutionalists we claim to be, let’s begin first with the end in mind - and let our minds be open as we seek how best to attain the true vision our founding fathers had for this great experiment in self-government.

Day 4
It is important we recognize that the era of general peace and prosperity the world has enjoyed since the end of WWII is largely due to our nation’s efforts and investments in global affairs. Human endeavors are subject to the laws of nature, one of which – the Second Law of Thermodynamics – states that the universe trends toward disorder without an input of energy. We can argue whether it’s fair that the U.S. must supply a disproportionate amount of the resources required to maintain order, but we must recognize that whatever the financial cost we have borne to maintain that order is far preferable to the tragic human cost that has been, and must be, paid to restore it.

Day 5
We should recognize that neither free markets, nor government are the panacea nor evil that some make them out to be. Both have their place and their drawbacks, with each serving as another important check and balance in our system of self-governance. Free markets naturally resist the imposition of an overbearing government that would limit human endeavor and ingenuity, while government restrains the worst in human nature that often manifests itself in the exploitation of free markets for personal gain at the expense of workers, customers and society.

Day 6
History shows that long before tyrants seek to confiscate guns, they first discredit the elites, academics and truth-tellers. Whether Lenin’s attacks on the intelligentsia, Mussolini’s promise to “drenare la palude” (drain the swamp) or Hitler’s attacks on the Lugenpresse (lying press), each first seized control of the “truth,” twisting it to quell dissent before seeking control of arms. Once in control of the narrative, the government could then act with impunity and the people obeyed passively. We must therefore learn from history and hold our First Amendment rights in at least as much esteem and defend them as unwaveringly as those in the Second, lest we find ourselves armed to the teeth with nothing left worth defending.

Day 7
We must rediscover community. We are a nation of immigrants, millions of people who left home, family and congregation to seek a better life in America. But once here, they settled in places reminiscent of home - Chinatown, Little Italy, Hamtramck - where they formed communities in the truest sense of the word. Their children then took advantage of the educational and economic opportunities afforded them, settling into lifelong careers that placed many in the same home, parish and community for a lifetime, leading to lives with a far richer texture than many enjoy today. Today's lack of community has turned us into a nation of seekers full of angst, unsettled by change and uncertainty as we create more change and uncertainty in search of...what?

Family, friends and community are far more important than the latest smartphone or larger flatscreen TV. We must take care of our families - and wealth allows us to attack many ills our forebearers suffered - but we must not sacrifice our connection to others in pursuit of wealth, either individually or collectively. It is only through connection to people who matter that we can truly find Life, Liberty and Happiness.

Day 8
Emotions win elections, but we must acknowledge that not all emotions are healthy. Confidence, optimism, resolve and compassion are foundations for both a healthy life and healthy society. Fear, anger, mistrust and selfishness are not. We can be vigilant without being fearful, compassionate without being weak, resolute without being bullies. Let's base our politics - the means to the ends we seek - on healthy emotions, while looking into our own hearts and minds to purge emotions detrimental to the health of democracy and the soul of society.

Day 9
Compromise is not a dirty word. The United States itself would not exist had our founding fathers not compromised on the powers of the presidency, the structure of Congress, the counting of slaves in electoral and Congressional apportionment and the inclusion of a Bill of Rights. It was imperfect, but the alternative would have been a continent of potentially hostile nation-states. We must learn from their lesson that imperfect agreement, rather than perfect obstinance, is the only path to a more perfect union.

Day 10
With rights come responsibility, and among the most important responsibilities is to remain informed. This means studying history, seeking hard journalism and perusing sources we do not necessarily agree with. History gives us an understanding of where we've been and how actions have real consequences. Hard journalism is history's first draft, giving us insight into where we are. And differing opinions act like resistance training for the mind, keeping us sharp and flexible as we try to discern where events might lead. Wisdom can only rise from thoughtfully considered, fact-based knowledge. Therefore, facts matter, knowledge is good and the wisdom they can deliver should be our goal and our guide.

Day 11
Civil is the root word of civilization. Therefore, to succeed and sustain society, we must learn (or relearn) to be civil with one another. That begins with respect, not only for others but for ourselves, for it is impossible to respect others without self respect. It is possible to question and criticize respectfully, and when we ourselves are the target of vitriol and disrespect, we must learn to turn the other cheek. It is hard, but it's also why walking away or seeking the high road is a sign of strength of character and self esteem. Let us be strong - resolute - in demanding civility of ourselves and our public officials.

Day 12
We must tread lightly regarding religious faith and politics. While many of our founding fathers were deeply religious, they were also wary of mixing faith and politics. If the two are to cross paths, we would be well-served to turn to Lincoln for guidance. His Second Inaugural, competing with Gettysburg as perhaps the finest political speech in U.S. history, could easily be mistaken for a Sunday sermon. Yet, it was far from an infusion of faith into politics, where one leans on God to impose one's beliefs to control the behavior of others. Instead, it was an attempt to frame the Civil War and future turmoil as God's price for the sin of slavery. It was faith as a path to understanding rather than a path to power. Those are two very different applications of faith. Lincoln's example was faith as a foundation of life itself, outside of politics, which is precisely where it should remain.

Day 13
Values are the basis for culture. That is true of teams, organizations and society. Therefore, the values we expect of our elected leaders will become the basis of our culture. Falling into the trap of believing all politicians lie, cheat and steal will make it so. Conversely, if we make moral character built on values of honesty and decency, rather than politics and policy, the minimum threshold upon which we choose our leaders, and hold them accountable for the same, we will see government and society reflect those values - from our local boards and councils to Washington, D.C.

Day 14
Day 14: Defending democracy demands that we defend the institutions that make it possible. These are the rule of law, free elections, a free press, the separation of powers. I've said it often, but when faith in banks is destroyed, banks fail. When faith in currencies is destroyed, currencies fail. And when faith in the institutions of democracy is destroyed, democracies fail. We must defend those institutions. Not blindly - nothing should be defended blindly - but when they are attacked we must question the motive of those attacking them and consider the charges with as clear and open a mind as possible. And if those charges are the least bit suspect, we must defend those institutions as though our lives, liberty and happiness depends upon it. Because they do.

Education Must Serve All, Lest It Serve None

In her 60 Minutes interview Sunday night, Secretary of Education Betsy Devos stated she has not visited failing schools because she wants to study what is working at successful schools. I understand the logic behind visiting such high-performing schools and championing their innovative endeavors. However, this is where a purely free-market approach to education raises its greatest threat. That's because every successful free market endeavor must segment the general public and seek to serve a specific subset of that market. Our public schools cannot - and must not - do the same. They must serve all students, regardless of geography or demography.

Thus, it is imperative that we study not only what works in successful schools, but what is behind the failure in less successful schools. The programs that work in good schools may be successful not so much because of the program itself, but because of the audience it serves. What works in Brentwood may not work in the Bronx or in an opioid-afflicted rural community. There may be factors beyond the lack of the proper program that stunts achievement.

I understand the logic and potential merits of school choice, but we must be careful that we do not do to our students what we have done to our young athletes, which is to create a system of "select" programs that do a wonderful job of serving those with the means and motivation to participate and the parental support to enable such participation, but leave behind a larger group of children with poorer instruction, fewer peers to serve as outstanding role models and measuring sticks and the stigma of being disposable.

Our nation is already well down a troubling road of creating an insurmountable chasm between haves and have-nots. The single best way to close that gap and ensure not only a healthy generation of children, but a healthy society is through universal, quality education. Studying only what works without identifying what is wrong is akin to studying disease by ignoring the sick and studying only the healthy. We can't ignore half the population. Public education must work for all students, or it will wind up working for none of us.

Life in the NRA's USA

In 1975, Lynyrd Skynyrd released Saturday Night Special, a song about the iconic six-shot revolver that left no doubt the band questioned the value of a weapon good for nothing but to "put a man a-six feet in a hole." That same year, my high school freshman civics class held a series of debates on the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I was assigned the Second Amendment.

I do not recall if I had to take the pro or con on the amendment. I do not recall if the debate centered on the individual right to possess firearms, if it centered on the intent of referencing a well-regulated militia, or if it centered on the pros and cons of adding the amendment to the Constitution in the first place.

What I do recall, however, was that as a public high school student, school shootings were not part of the conversation. The thought never even entered our minds. Why would they? Such events, if they took place at all, were so rare as to be neither part of the public discourse nor public consciousness. We didn't think about them because they didn't happen. What was in the public consciousness - and what was a central part of the overall discussion on crime and violence - were those Saturday Night Specials, so-called because they were the weapon of choice for burglars, drug dealers and spurned lovers who often found reason to use said weapons to resolve a drug deal gone bad or mete out justice on an unfaithful partner, often on a Saturday night.

The results of our high school debate are irrelevant. But what is relevant is where that larger societal debate on Saturday Night Specials took us, because suggestions to register those weapons began the NRA's shift from an advocate of gun safety to one vociferously defending and arguing for the individual right to own a gun. The NRA warned us those early suggestions of registration were the beginning of a dreaded slippery slope.

Time covers show the evolution of US firearms from 1968-2012

It was a slippery slope, alright, but not the one of ever tighter registration, restriction and eventual gun confiscation that the NRA warned about. Instead, it was the slippery slope of ever increasing exploitation of fear to justify the right and need to possess guns. The gradual but steady portrayal of our government as an evil threat to arm ourselves against using the guns protected in the Second Amendment, rather than to engage via the rights enshrined in the First. The NRA raised funds warning of jack-booted government thugs coming to take away guns. They lobbied for lax Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms enforcement of existing laws. They fought restrictions on the sale and firepower of guns. They enabled and encouraged the growth of gun shows where background checks often pay mere lip service to the concept and the gun trade became the equivalent of model trains - a hobby with an insatiable thirst for cooler, more realistic accessories that leaves a small, but significant subset living in an unhealthy fantasy world where they are defenders of truth, justice and the American Way.

Gun shows have turned the American arms race into a hobby - or vice versa

Meanwhile, we adapted to the new publicly-held firepower. We installed security cameras and metal detectors at airports, courthouses, football stadia and more. We began inspecting purses and backpacks when entering concerts and ballgames. We are witnessing the militarization of our local police forces. And now, the NRA is using those examples to argue that our schools are "deserving" of the same protections. That our schools deserve metal detectors, surveillance cameras, inspections, armed guards, armed teachers. That to do any less is neglect and a dereliction of our duty to our children. Their term of choice for what they envision is "harden."

There is another term that describes the NRA's vision of America.

Police state.

Bottom line, we are allowing those with the weapons to dictate how we are to live our lives. Therein lies the sad irony of the NRA's forty-plus year fight for gun rights in the name of preserving liberty. In pursuing those rights, they have created a society that is less free, less secure. The NRA's world is Orwellian in the purest sense, where words mean the opposite. Guns mean safety. Surveillance ensures liberty. Inspections deliver freedom.

Some liken what we are witnessing to the proverbial frog in the slowly warming pot, where bit by bit, we cede our real freedom - the freedom to move about without worry of harm or the scrutiny of unseen watchful eyes, the freedom to send our kids to school without fear - until one day we realize the world we've created is precisely the dangerous dystopia from which those guns promised to protect us.

A 2017 NRA ad warns of evil forces in and outside of government

In some ways, however, what we are witnessing is more like a pressure cooker. The growing concentration of guns in the hands of fewer people, fueled by NRA warnings against dark forces inside and outside of government risks not just our safety, but society itself. In the NRA's world, not only is the government something to be viewed as sinister, but so are any who question the motives of the self-proclaimed righteous. The media, Hollywood, protesters and liberals are all presented as enemies of liberty. It is the classic "us versus them" construct, whereby the NRA is not only encouraging the development of a heavily armed, unregulated civilian army, but is also creating an enemy against which they must prepare to do battle. With a complicit conservative media fueling the flame, anger simmers and pressure builds. It is doubtful those weapons will remain forever sheathed. People looking for a fight are rarely disappointed. What the triggering event might be is a mystery, but just as pilots are warned of the "moth effect," whereby they fly towards objects they fixate upon, so should we beware that those fixated upon a righteous battle with evil adversaries will find those adversaries and be drawn towards - and into - just such a battle.

God help us if they do. The thought of an angry, disorganized mob of self-styled patriots who fancy themselves modern-day Minutemen, but lacking modern-day Washingtons, Jeffersons and Madisons to back their fervor with intellect and principle, leading a revolution against the United States of America does not lend itself to images of desirable outcomes. It could end quickly in a more serious, though no less decisive, Apache helicopter/A10 Warthog version of Indiana Jones and the guy with the sword. It could end with large parts of like-minded military units joining in to take on our government. Or, it just might never end. It's impossible to predict what life, politics or our system of government would look like on the other side of such an uprising, but it is hard to believe it would be an improvement upon the greatest experiment in liberty and democracy the world has ever seen.

Which all begs the question - is this the path upon which we wish to continue? Do we want the NRA and the most heavily armed among us dictating that we must accept intrusion in our personal lives, inconveniences in our public places and occasional mass death so they can continue to arm themselves against our own government? Because that is what five decades of NRA advocacy and activism has delivered.  And their answer - their only answer - is more of the same. The word for that is insanity. It is time to stop. More guns are not the answer. In a civil society, they never are.

Our founding fathers gave us all the tools we need to protect us from an overbearing government with rights enshrined in the Constitution that do not require taking up arms. With a free press to keep us informed, the freedom to speak out as we see fit, the right to hold our government accountable through peaceable assembly and petition, all backed up by the might of the ballot box, we have all the power we need. But in our zeal for guns, fueled by a fear-mongering NRA, we've lost sight of that.  The first step is to end the fascination with guns and the fantasy that they are the tool of choice in defending us from ourselves, for we may wake up one day only to find those guns have done nothing but place us in an armed prison of our own making. That is hardly freedom's safest place.