When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time, they can seem invincible but in the end, they always fall. Think of it–always.
Mahatma Gandhi
The previous post in this new op-ed category aired the major grievances with the presidential campaign that just concluded and I don’t think it really takes being the Oracle of Delphi to divine who I voted for President.
I realise it’s a long read and I appreciate anyone that has the fortitude to make it all the way through and hopefully you will see the many reasons why I could not possibly cast my vote for the President-elect in good conscience.
You can add to them the fact that I felt he was unfit and unqualified for the office in 2015 when the idea of him running became reality rather than a punchline. This was not because of any personal animus but rather because I felt his experience in running the Trump Organization where he could act as an absolute dictator was incompatible with a political office governed by the Constitution that requires compromising with 535 individuals with much smaller constituencies whose desired policies would likely conflict if not contradict what would be in the interests of Mr Trump were he to be elected. And even when something somehow makes it through the vivisection known as the legislative process, one has to hope that a majority of Supreme Court justices won’t strike down the law out of pure spite.
The chaos and enriching of himself and his family (as well as the many millionaires/billionaires he made “rich as hell”) whilst in office, the denial of the reality that he’d lost the election in 2020 as well as his actions before, during, and after the insurrection and the last four years culminating in a campaign marked by insults and bizarre behaviour meant he didn’t have a chance of changing my mind on his fitness for office.
If anything, the past eight years have confirmed my worst fears and really do not fill me with confidence that the next four years full of promised retribution and revenge will be any better for the United States and it’s people.
Obviously, there were a hell of a lot more people out there who did cast a vote for the winning presidential ticket and that’s where things get a bit tricky because there were a lot of hard feelings throughout this campaign stoked by parties and wealthy interests who win when the American people are starkly divided against each other.
As I said in the previous post, I don’t believe in dropping the grievances bomb without at least offering what I see as potential solutions or actions that can be taken.
I don’t expect that everyone will agree with those proposed solutions but I’d hope they’d at least that they’re offered from a position of wishing to find the best possible solution that benefits the greatest number of people based on objectively provable facts.
Where Do I Fall On The Political Spectrum?
I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as one if its members.
Groucho Marx resigning from the Friar’s Club
For the most part, I don’t have any real affinity with or affection for either major political party.
I never have when they were less extreme than they are today and when I registered independent in 2004, I’ve never looked back mainly because the two main political parties have ignored and essentially silenced the growing independent portion of the electorate that only leans slightly left or right of centre.
We’re those boring people who would rather be serious about solving serious problems facing our nation. We’re not typically the ones you’re going to find with a microphone (or megaphone!) and boring solution policy wonks don’t tend to sell advertising at premium rates.
Truth be told, the Libertarian manifesto sounds the most appealing to me but the hard reality is that a third-party has absolutely no chance at the presidency until the American people forcibly wrests the political process from the entrenched extremist political parties and creates an electoral process that does not overly favour the two incumbent political parties.
Somehow I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
Were I to be asked, I tend to describe the continuum of my views as being rather liberal on social/identity issues and very conservative on fiscal issues.
On the financial side, I’ve given up hope that government will ever be able to properly finance its massive operations by anything that approaches living within our means or accounting principles that aren’t straight out of Fantasyland and that I expect them to continue borrowing massive amounts of money and lying about how much the deficits are until the economy crashes because the rest of the world can’t keep propping up our out-of-control spending.
In elections, my vote is usually for the female candidates to lose. If I can’t vote for a reasonably competent woman, then I’m looking for the least crazy and ignorant amongst the candidates that remain.
My preferred sources of news and information are those that tend to rank high in reliability and original fact reporting with as little bias as possible. The interactive media bias chart and other sources like it have been useful for weeding out the hopelessly useless media outlets.
Anything in the green box that’s right about on the centre axis (i.e. a reliability score > 40 and bias within three points of centre either way) is fair game but my go-to for pretty much my entire life is BBC News. I realise they’ve definitely favoured the Conservative Party through the years but as a starting point for finding out what’s happening in my own country, they’re typically the best available source (plus, I’ve got all of the coverage of sport such as proper football, Formula 1, and cricket as a happy bonus!).
More often than not, I’m usually looking to the Associated Press and Reuters for corroborating evidence and fact reporting for news events.
That doesn’t mean that I’m not occasionally checking out the more extreme media outlets such as CNN/MSNBC if I’m looking in on what the lefties are thinking or Fox if I’m curious about what is being said to the MAGA crowd but I typically have an extremely high level of skepticism on the truth of the reporting and will rarely use them as support in an argument without corroboration from a more trusted reporter of fact.
With that in mind, these are the things I’m going to try to do in the coming four years.
Staying Engaged In Productive Political Discourse
It would be easy to just chuck discussing politics in the bin, particularly after a nasty campaign such as the one we just witnessed.
What gives me hope for our future is when I can engage in a meaningful and adult conversation with a person whose views I may not agree with.
I’ll qualify that by mentioning that if you’re hopelessly racist, misogynistic, or homophobic (or some hideous combination of them!) and can’t be bothered to keep that stuff to yourself, then I really don’t see where we could ever have a productive conversation much less a meaningful relationship!
In fact, I took a break from the initial draft of this post to have just such a conversation for about thirty minutes with one of Katie’s freshman colleagues on the upper level of the Campbell University student union where I’d camped out to get some writing done whilst she was working her shift at the campus Starbucks.
I could tell there were significant differences of opinion between us but the conversation was respectful all round and it was gratifying to see he at least saw the value in putting in the effort to be intelligent and informed about the political issues facing our country. Would it be that more people (particularly the young!) would be as what the front of the young gent’s shirt that was a souvenir from a trip to Boston said: “wicked smaht” when it comes to politics and current events!
I have a feeling he’s going to do well in whatever he turns his attention to doing when he has the benefit of practical experience!
One of my favourite lines from a beloved movie on politics really drives home the value of having rational and adult political conversations that start from the premise that the person I’m talking with likely had different life experiences and they’re not necessarily wrong and my views may well be enriched and changed from listening to their point of view:
It’s a funny thing about men, you know. They all start life being boys. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if some of these Senators were boys once. And that’s why it seemed like a pretty good idea for me to get boys out of crowded cities and stuffy basements for a couple of months out of the year. And build their bodies and minds for a man-sized job, because those boys are gonna be behind these desks some of these days. And it seemed like a pretty good idea, getting boys from all over the country, boys of all nationalities and ways of living. Getting them together. Let them find out what makes different people tick the way they do. Because I wouldn’t give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn’t have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness and a – a little lookin’ out for the other fella, too…That’s pretty important, all that.
Senator Jefferson Smith — “Mister Smith Goes To Washington”
But giving the other person the benefit of the doubt is not an invitation to uncritically accepting patently and provably wrong talking points.
If we’re having the conversation, I reserve the right to call out BS when I see it with the hope that the other person knows me well enough that I’m not going to do that without being very sure of my position and the facts that can be proven by as unbiased sources of information as are available.
I would expect nothing less from whoever I’m talking to. If you think I’m wrong, say so and let’s have the debate. As long as I get in my innings, I’m more than happy to give as much as I’m going to take! 🙂
Holding Elected Officials Accountable With The Mightiest Sword
This campaign was filled with all sorts of campaign promises and if I’m honest about my feelings on them, the vast majority of promises on both sides were at best bad ideas and the ones that weren’t were truly horrific if not dangerous to democracy and human rights.
I believe we are about to enter into a very dangerous time politically, particularly if the House stays in the hands of the Republicans who have proven themselves incapable of governing in their majority like adults and thus consigned this past Congress to being one of if not *THE* least productive Congressional sessions ever.
The problem is that the difficulties and challenging facing the American people don’t take time off and need serious people to address them and so many times in the last two years watching the Speaker of the House du jour trying to be ringmaster to a circus full of clowns was disheartening at best.
But it may well be that dysfunction that actually saves us by neutering the ability of Mr Trump to force through some of his more damaging proposals.
You might have noticed I rather like writing. I’ve found it to be a very therapeutic exercise, especially when the Washington political elite does something I find particularly egregious.
Fortunately, I have this op-ed page and I’m not afraid to use it.
And for those times that penning an op-ed on the blog isn’t sufficient, I’ll have no problem packaging it and putting it into the post even knowing it’d be shocking if the responsible person actually sees and reads it or it even makes it past a staffer’s rubbish bin.
I’ve carpet-bombed official Washington before with an amicus curiae brief and I have no problem doing it again in defence against deplorable political policy.
That particular one got a reply from both of North Carolina’s Senators (with the response from Senator Tillis being slightly more useful than retiring Senator Burr’s) and a response hand signed by President Biden!
I may not have the argument that carries the day but at least it won’t be for lack of trying.
Trump Voters Are Not The Enemy But The Media (Especially Social Media) Certainly Is!
This one is arguably the toughest because of the nasty emotional tone of this campaign.
I’ve always been of the view that people who have political differences from me are not necessarily the enemy.
I know plenty of people who supported Mr Trump’s candidacy for one reason or another. If you truly feel that your life was better economically when he was in power four years ago and can articulate that from a sincere and reasoned point of view, I’m honestly not going to have a problem with that.
My experience was markedly different but that’s not unusual in a country with a large population of diverse experience such as ours.
If you feel that there are particular policies he’s likely to pursue that was enough to sway your vote into his column, I don’t really have a problem with that either.
When he was president, I do believe he made a few decisions that were likely the right ones in spite of what the media/social media outlets would have you believe.
For example, the decision to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem was very controversial and pissed off more than a few people in Islamic countries. But the hard reality for those countries is that Israel will never be allowed to be destroyed as long as the United States can aid in their defence and Israel will never allow Jerusalem to be owned by anyone other than Israel.
People may not like it but that’s the hard political reality.
He also managed to get some Islamic countries to open up diplomatic relations with Israel (the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco to name a few) so if you’re flying direct from Dubai to Tel Aviv and overflying Saudi Arabia in the process, you have Mr Trump to thank for not having a couple of hours added to your trip.
Mr Trump signed off on the plans to orchestrate the assassination of Iran’s General Qassem Soleimani who will not be missed by the victims of his many terrorist actions and somehow managed to keep Iran from retaliating in a meaningful way.
Also, Mr Trump’s decision to ground the Boeing 737 Max was the correct decision that the FAA would never have done without a lot more provocation than two crashes that were directly attributed to the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) system.
The man’s favourite ride is his personal Boeing 757-200 and there is nothing that happens with that bird that he is not intimately aware of. He had that plane in for a mandatory maintenance check which involved pulling the engines. He noticed the cowlings that were fitted to the front of the nacelles when the engines had returned from their maintenance were not the ones that belonged to his plane.
If there is any president who could reasonably be considered fairly aware of the FAA and aircraft safety, Mr Trump would be one. His life rather depends on that plane operating safely!
There were other decisions he took the first time I felt were at best wrong and more often mean-spirited and nasty and his behaviour since he lost in 2020 hasn’t really filled me with confidence about how well this coming term will go.
Obviously, other people may well disagree and/or have policy positions they cared more about than the ones that I found most compelling and that’s perfectly OK in a democracy.
So my presumption is that friends and family who voted for Mr Trump made their selection from a position of sincere belief that he was the best candidate for their personal situation and political leanings which may well be very different than mine.
I don’t and won’t presume them to be “deplorable” or “garbage” as that sort of pejorative rhetoric does no one any favours and just leads to more hard feelings in a country that’s already overloaded with them as it is. I won’t stick around if they end up crossing the red lines I’d identified above but I will walk away quietly and keep the memories of when the relationship was in a far better place.
Trump voters aren’t necessarily the enemy but the media and social media that seeks to manipulate them through lies, deceit, or other forms of psychological coercion most certainly are the enemy of our democracy.
Social media in particular can give one insight into motivations of a voter, particularly if they’re inclined to repeat proven disinformation as if it were absolute truth and not only refuse to engage in a debate on provable fact but go so far as to silence those who do not agree lock-step with their position.
There’s a “bravery” that comes with the anonymity of being behind a screen name or a keyboard where a normally reasonable person will say things online they would never dare utter in a face-to-face conversation.
I’ve long had little to no use for most of the traditional news outlets and I’ve found that political discussions on social media to be equally if not more worthless at the end of the day.
If you choose to read something I’ve invested the effort to write, I’m more grateful than you will ever know for the gift of your time and the chance to perhaps provide a perspective you may not have encountered.
If it changes your thinking for the better or at least broadens your perspective, then that’s all I’m trying to accomplish…putting the truth as I see it where it can be seen.
If it doesn’t, I’ve at least made the best argument I feel I can make or you might well convince me of something I didn’t know and that is still a good thing.
I try to see both sides of the issues du jour before commenting upon them but that is often done in the service of making the strongest possible argument rather than just trying to play the “both sides” game. Unlike the traditional media that pretends to adhere to the so-called “Fairness Doctrine”, I actually do in the research I do prior to commenting but that’s where it ends when I’m ready to write my opinion.
At the end of the day, I’ve got my opinion and the reader has theirs and that’s the way it is.
In terms of social media, I don’t do much with Facebook or Twitter as it is but I’ll probably confine myself to posting links to stories and enjoying life updates from friends and family whilst avoiding as many extraneous political conversations over the social media platforms as I can.
I’ll probably post the op-ed links until it becomes more of a hassle full of ad hominem attacks in the comments than it’s worth (though I’m leaning toward just publishing the post-election rants without publicising them).
But I will not stop writing them and hopefully they will do my dear readers some good.
If not, then at least it helps me try to stave off going stark staring mad in the face of bad news du jour. 😉
What’s Next?
In order to keep from completely losing my mind, I’ve been streaming “The West Wing” on MAX and fans of President Jed Bartlet will know that when he says “what’s next”, it means he’s ready to move on to the next issue and he’s ready for the staff to come along with him.
In this case, the final post of the three post-election op-ed pieces will be a detailed breakdown of just how costly and ineffective the massive amount of propaganda stuffed into my post box really was… 🙂