Democracy vs. Fascism: America's Choice in the 2024 Election

Let’s get real about the most vital issue Americans face as we slowly march toward our dubious future as a nation.

It’s not about President Biden’s age which is annoyingly centerstage. After all, Donald Trump is only three years younger than the president, morbidly obese, and an obvious psychopath.  It’s about one issue and one issue only and that is whether we survive as a democracy and what will happen if not.

So far in this threatening time President Biden is the only viable candidate if we value our freedom in this contentious time. Given his commitment to the principles of democracy and the protection of the Constitution and his years of experience and achievement domestically and internationally, there is no other choice. That story needs to be told often and powerfully. The fact is you don’t have to like him or always agree with him, but you do need to realize that our future depends on his re-election, because once democracy disappears you never get it back, at least not for decades if you’re lucky. Every other issue from the economy, taxes, gun control, reproductive healthcare, First Amendment rights, education, a free press, and our stature in the world depends on saving our democracy. It’s that simple – and that urgent.

Americans are lucky. We haven’t lived under an autocracy or a dictatorship. We have no idea what that’s like in real terms, but it’s never pretty. There are many examples of how bad it is. To be clear, autocratic governments and dictatorships are similar but there is a distinction between them as the Carnegie Foundation has noted. As they point out, there are two important differences: An autocracy focuses power on a single person, while single-party dictatorships can share power through a small group of people who are appointed by the dictator. Dictatorships always include inherent abuse of power, while some autocrats relying on centralized power can sometimes effect positive change for their citizens. Both autocrats and dictators, however, exercise total control.

It’s important to realize that dictators have absolute power (think Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler).   Human rights are suppressed, and any sign of opposition is quickly shut down with intimidation, imprisonment, physical violence, or assassination. Citizens have “shallow levels of freedom,” and “no personal autonomy or quality of life. Social organizations and democratic institutions cease to exist, and democratic countries see the end of their rights as enshrined in constitutions.” People can lose their religion, see sexual orientation and same-sex marriage outlawed while security police are ubiquitous, and surveillance is prevalent. Over time no one dares to trust anyone.

According to the Carnegie Foundation democracies flourished in the 20th century but by 2019 dictatorships outnumbered democracies, sharing features including repressed opposition, control of communications, punishment of critics, imposed ideology and frequent attacks on democratic ideals.  Cross-border travel is stopped, and fear prevails as information becomes propaganda.

In the course of my international work, I became aware of the reality of autocratic and dictatorial countries. Even knowing I could leave, if I behaved myself, I sensed the oppression.  A Kenyan woman advised me to be cautious about the kind of questions I asked. In 1960s Greece when the political future there was bleak, I naively remarked to a man sitting next to me on an airplane that I didn’t think much of his government.  He interrogated me for the rest of the journey about who I’d been speaking with. In Romania, where the deceased dictator Ceausescu had mandated monthly pelvic exams for female students and workers to ensure pregnancies were carried to term I saw scores of children in an orphanage as a result. The visit shook me to the core. In Burma someone whispered her oppression, and in China, at the 1995 UN women’s conference, as a journalist I was barred from opening ceremonies, and I suspected I was surveilled and tapped in my hotel room. My relief as the plane departed was palpable.

We need to think about what life was like in the Franco, Marcos or Pinochet regimes in Spain, the Philippines or Chile. Today we must think about what life is like in Hungary under the control of Viktor Orban. In power for years he has “chipped away at the foundations of democracy,” as Vox.com put it. There journalism requires permits, propaganda prevails, and refugees and Muslims are seen as an existential threat. Dissent is silenced or disappears if it occurs in public or on blogs. Books vanish from libraries and shops. It didn’t happen overnight. It was achieved gradually in subtle ways.

Nationalism, right wing religion, militarism, anti-liberalism, and the silencing of citizens are deeply destructive forces that result in devastation and despair.  We cannot, we must not, ignore the signs of autocracy and fascism that already exist, or the dangerous pledges of Donald Trump. Nor can we think it can’t happen here. Our challenge is to ensure that autocracy or dictatorship doesn’t surprise us because we ignored its signals or couldn’t envision such systems. To protect ourselves and our country we must exercise the strongest sign of resistance to oppression, and that is our vote. It is incumbent upon each of us to keep that focus as we head to local, state, and national polling stations.

We must be prepared to save our democracy.

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Will the U.S. Have Post Election Buyer's Remorse?

After Great Britain formally withdrew from the European Union nearly two years ago, a move known as Brexit, it didn’t take long for those who voted for withdrawal from the economic agreement among European nations to regret their decision. Similarly, it took only six weeks for the British electorate to regret having voted for Liz Truss as Prime Minister, a post she was forced to leave after just six weeks in office.  Both the Brexit decision and the appointment of Truss were achieved by Britain’s conservative party and its leadership, both of which will likely fall to the labor party in the next election if not sooner.

With U.S. midterm elections upon us, one can’t help wondering if we too will experience buyer’s remorse in the months to come if our now dangerous and dystopian conservative party wins a majority in either or both Congressional chambers, and/or state and local offices.

How that could happen is incredible to those of us among the majority of American voters, not all of whom are radically left leaning, given what we know is at stake. How, we ask ourselves, can people vote against their own interests? How could they not realize what will happen if the Republican party succeeds in promulgating hideous legislation that blatantly favors the wealthy and the white, while punishing workers and women, as well as multitudes of others? How could they prioritize gas prices over fascism?

It isn’t just America’s elderly, poor, black and brown people, disabled citizens, and children who will suffer most. It’s females whose bodies will be owned by the state. It’s the LBGTQ community who will not be able to marry the person they love. It’s increasing gun violence and domestic terrorism. It’s banned and burned books, control of school curricula, inaccessible quality healthcare in a time of unending pandemics. It’s the continuation of a failing infrastructure that could cost lives, and threats to the planet on which we all live.

The answer to the question “how could that happen here?” is that the demise of democracy as we know it at risk because white supremacy and institutionalized racism –fascism’s core – has existed since America was founded. It’s the foundation of privilege built by orchestrated fear of, control over, and willful punishment directed at immigrants, indigenous people, people of color and other cultures, and those who disagree with dangerously selfish and destructive power grabs by narcissistic maniacs and their acolytes who want a share of wealth and power. At its worst it condemns, attacks, imprisons, deports, and one way or another eliminates “the Other.”

Should Republicans come into power legislators like Rick Scott of Florida will work to promote his “Rescue America” plan which sound great, but really means that Social Security and Medicare would be renegotiated every five years and could ultimately be so diminished that our elders will be doomed to live in poverty and possibly die from lack of needed healthcare.

South Carolina’s Lindsay Graham and other Republicans want to see “entitlement reform” which means steep cuts to Social Security along with a raised retirement age. Medicare, Medicaid, and badly needed prescription drug reform, including the right to negotiate prices with Big Pharma and cap insulin cost would be compromised at best. Meanwhile Marco Rubio is waiting to repeal President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act that among other things caps prescription costs for Medicare beneficiaries.

Kevin McCarthy, who would be Speaker of the House should Republicans win, is threatening to hold the U.S. debt limit hostage to policy changes, even though it was Republicans who added massively to the national debt because of their tax cuts to corporations and obscenely wealthy individuals.

Basically, Republicans simply want to reverse, nullify, limit, or kill all the achievements of the Biden Administration, US citizens be damned.

America as we’ve known it is truly at risk in a way that most of us have never known or acknowledged in our lifetimes, despite the fact that racism and white supremacy have always been part of our life and legacy. It is time now, before it’s too late for generations to come, that we recognize the underbelly of our country in order to save it and make it whole, and that we ensure common cause so that we can grow and thrive as a free and feeling nation.

Politically, we have two kinds of needs. The first is practical. The second is strategic. Right now, voting is a practical need that is immediate, easy to do with quick results. It’s not as controversial as strategic needs which include long term work and social change, like giving women the right to vote. Strategic needs are aimed at equity, freedom, and democracy. We have to address them too, but they will not be easy or quick.

Our task now is to embrace voting to save what we value. That right and responsibility has never been more urgent. But our responsibility doesn’t end with voting. It begins there and leads to doing the hard work of defending, perpetuating, and securing democracy. Only then can we recover from our present trauma and begin to rebuild a stronger, better nation that is sustainable, inclusive, equitable, and empathetic than the one we find ourselves in at this crucial moment.

Enablers, Collaborators, and a Mussolini Moment

It started with a ride down an escalator. And it’s been escalating ever since. From the first cries of rapists invading our country to dog whistles like “Stand back, stand by” Donald Trump’s dangerous delusions of power and control have brought this country to the brink of collapse, and everyone who has allowed that to happen is an enabler and a collaborator.

From White House cronies who share in Trump’s power fantasies and who are incapable of running a government especially  during a crisis, to his equally evil children, to Republicans in the Senate led by Mitch McConnell, to America’s attorney general, to the doctors at Walter Reed who agreed to lie for the president and to sign non-disclosure agreements thereby violating their Hippocratic oath, to the ICE bullies who separated infants and children from their parents and put them in concentration camps, to the heads of the CDC and FDA who caved after White House pressure, they are all responsible for the rise of autocracy, and increased violence.

They are also responsible for militias that now feel emboldened in their militarism and for bad cops who mercilessly shoot to death Black and Brown men and women. They are responsible for the resurgent KKK and they are responsible for federal courts being packed with ultra-conservative, lifetime judges, as well as for a Supreme Court that is eager to see the original Handmaid added to their ranks. In short, they are responsible for the destruction of democracy.

They are why we are on the edge of a truly great depression, and why America has lost its standing in the world. They are responsible for the disasters in our health, education, and infrastructure systems, for the filth in our water and the comeback of chemicals in our food. And they are responsible for the deaths of over 100,000 Americans who died needlessly because the Super Spreader in Chief just didn’t give a damn.

Indeed, they are responsible for the Mussolini Moment on the balcony of our dictator’s palace, and they, like him, bear some of the guilt for negligent homicide and crimes against humanity.

They are also examples of “the banality of evil” that philosopher Hannah Arendt warned us about when she reported on the trial of Adolph Eichmann after the Holocaust. Eichmann was, he said, simply following orders. 

So were the White House staff, the Secret Service men who vow to give their life for the president, but not in a hermetically sealed vehicle, the employees of government agencies who didn’t speak up or quit their jobs in order to save this country, the business moguls who didn’t end their major donations to a corrupt fraud, Fox News who wouldn’t stand up to a lunatic when he blamed everyone else for our disasters and incited violence. So too are the voters who inexplicably still stand with their man even though everything he does hurts them the most.

Every one of these people is the banality of evil personified. And every one of them became what Arendt called a “leaf blowing in the whirlwind of time.” Now every one of them bears responsibility for what lies ahead for us all.

Of course, some brave souls did stand up to the president. And everyone of them did it knowing that they would be punished mightily.  Think about Col. Vindman, and the others who gave testimony to Congress, the lawyers and doctors who wrote letters and petitions, and the activists who marched and were willing to suffer the consequences, including injury, arrest and jail time. They are our national heroes in this moment, the ones for whom new monuments should be built when this nightmare ends.

As for the rest of us, we must remember and own the fact that a great malignancy metastasized within our national body and many of us let it happen. We watched it ravish us and slowly terrorize us. We let it kill people we knew and loved. We looked the other way, always sure that it couldn’t get worse.

Now we need to understand that the “silence of one good man” can spell disaster for all good people. Each of us who remained passive as our impending disaster continued might have been the one “good man” who didn’t act, didn’t speak out, didn’t resist, while men like Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump insisted that infants be ripped from their mothers’ breasts. Men who didn’t care that innocent people were dying from gun violence, a plague, hunger, and violence, which they fostered. Men who didn’t care about pre-existing conditions or elders who rely on Social Security to survive. Men who didn’t care that women would be catapulted back to the Dark Ages.

Now the question is why didn’t we stop them sooner? Why didn’t we act in bigger, more effective, timely ways? Why did we let them continue for four devastating years, like the blind, chained inhabitants of Plato’s allegorical cave who were unable to escape their isolation because, trapped by ignorance and darkness, they couldn’t know the truth?

Can we now remove our blinders and see clearly the dawning truth in time to break our silence, reject the banality of evil, refuse to be a leaf blowing in the whirlwind of time?

What awaits us if not?

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Guns, Voting Rights, an Election and Cognitive Dissonance

Over the July 4the weekend, 160 people died from gun violence in America. One was a six-year old in Philadelphia, another was an eight-year old in Atlanta, and a third was a 15-year old in New York. Chicago saw the worst of it with 17 people fatally shot including two children. Sixty-three others were wounded. And that’s just the count for the holiday weekend. 

Research conducted recently by the University of California/Davis revealed a link between the rise in violence in the country and a surge in gun-buying since Covid-19 began, with over two million more guns sold in a three-month period this spring.

Given the continuing lack of gun safety legislation, and the increasingly public displays of white supremacy, the increase in gun sales shouldn’t come as a surprise. Violence of all kinds is on the rise.  The question is, Why haven’t more Americans been proactive on the issue of community gun violence as we face a November election? How is it that post Columbine, Newtown, Pulse and all the rest, we haven’t taken to the streets as we did for #BLM?

As Elizabeth Warren wrote in her 2015 book A Fighting Chance, “If a mysterious virus started killing eight children every day [as gun violence does], America would mobilize teams of doctors and public health officials. We’d move heaven and earth until we found a way to protect our children. But not with gun violence.” (It was an eerily prescient analogy.)

The death of civil rights icon Congressman John Lewis reminds us of another problem that plagues us as we draw closer to the most critical election in our lives. Remember that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 eliminated legal barriers at state and local levels that kept African Americans from voting. But in 2013 the Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice Roberts, effectively struck down the Voting Rights Act in a decision that allowed Republican states to enact voter ID laws, roll back early voting, and purge voter registration lists. Last year the Roberts court also barred challenges in federal court to partisan gerrymandering. Why in this now fragile democracy aren’t we repeating the brave and bold actions of the Civil Rights Movement to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to cast their ballot?

With secret government “police” being deployed to U.S. cities to kidnap and arrest journalists and citizens exercising their constitutional right to free speech, and with a runaway pandemic raging, which is nothing short of negligent homicide on the part of the president, why are we not in the streets demanding that Donald Trump resign (as Russians are now doing to oust Putin)?

As one friend put it, “You wouldn’t stay married to a serial killer, so why are so many Americans still putting up with Trump?”

The answer may lie in the concept of cognitive dissonance, defined by psychologists as “having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change.”

Cognitive dissonance includes feeling discomfort when a behavior or attitude is in conflict with one’s values and beliefs, or when new information is contrary to those beliefs. A sign of the phenomenon is ignoring facts and therefore making irrational decisions, according to experts, which goes a long way in explaining why so many people aren’t wearing masks – or still insist on thinking that Trump is an effective leader.

Interestingly, when people experience an inconsistency between what they believe and how they behave, they often take actions, or don’t take them, to help reduce growing discomfort. So, for example, they may reject, explain away, or avoid information, even when that information is vital to their health and safety, or saving the country. They may grow angry at forced compliance (masks), avoid learning (fact-finding), and find decisions hard to make, but once a decision is made, it is justified as the best available option.

Donald Trump is clearly experiencing cognitive dissonance in the extreme, along with his other psychological disorders. His thought processes are deeply damaged (and limited to begin with), he is totally irrational, and his paranoia and narcissism only add to the dangerous mix.

Although I’m not a psychologist, I suspect that other Republicans who cannot stand up to Trump despite knowing he is dangerously delusional struggle privately with their own cognitive dissonance. As for mask refusing, fact denying, irrational decision-makers, it’s a possible explanation for their strange and troubling behavior.

The rest of us are understandably fatigued, frightened, and feeling fragile, which makes marching in the streets at the risk of being picked up by gun toting government goons less than appealing. Still, we must act to protect ourselves from the overt fascism that is coming straight at us, and we must overwhelmingly Vote Blue in November or our current nightmare will not end.

We would do well to remember the words of the late John Lewis: “Do not get lost in a sea of despair. … [And] Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”

Whatever form it takes, and psychology aside, the time for trouble that we create is now.

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Elayne Clift writes from Saxtons River, Vt. www.elayne-clift.com

Why Democrats Need a Media Advocacy Campaign in 2020

When the late Dr. C. Everett Koop issued his first Surgeon General's report about the dangers of smoking in 1982 the media reported it widely. As a result, Dr. Koop realized that publicity and persuasion were effective tools in promoting healthier behavior. In 1984 he launched the Campaign for a Smoke-Free America by 2000 on the 20th anniversary of an earlier Surgeon General's Report on Smoking and Health, issued in 1964. That earlier report resulted in Congress requiring health warning labels on cigarette packages, and the 1970 ban on TV cigarette advertising. The multi-faceted anti-smoking campaign led to the percentage of Americans who smoked dropping by 33 percent over the course of Dr. Koop’s tenure.

When Koop positioned smoking as a public health issue, he was doing what media advocacy professionals call “framing.”  When he talked about how many people would die of smoking- related cancer, he didn’t just use big numbers. He added, “that’s the equivalent of [X number] of jumbo jets full of passengers crashing in a year.” That’s called “creative epidemiology.” And when he told a story about someone dying from smoking, he related it to a real person in the community where he was speaking, “juxtaposing” his message on a situation that audiences could relate to.

Koop didn’t change the culture of smoking by himself.  Many communication professionals contributed to the success of the anti-smoking campaign that led to behavior change and altered social norms nationally.  Working together, they mounted one of the most successful media advocacy efforts ever undertaken.  It’s now a case study of a methodology that changed health behavior, safety belt use, forest fire prevention, and more.

Media advocacy is the strategic use of mass media to advance public policy and address political issues that have important and harmful social consequences.  It’s rooted in community action and shifts attention from an individual’s attitudes and behavior to greater awareness and collective change, often relating to the political environment. Grounded in communication theory, it has proven to be an effective means of effecting change for everyone’s benefit.

Another method in behavior change communication is social marketing. It derives from a key question asked in the 1960s: “Why can’t you sell brotherhood like you sell soap?” That query led to a new communication objective: the “selling” of socially beneficial ideas and practices that could change behavior to improve all aspects of life, from protecting the environment, to making healthier lifestyle choices, to effecting policy. 

The first objective in social marketing and media advocacy is raising awareness about a problem. Persuading people that something must change follows, leading to individuals and communities taking action, whether its stopping smoking, joining a Green Movement, or voting out a bad president.

As we approach the election in the aftermath of Senate impeachment deliberations, and face continuing support for Donald Trump, voter suppression attempts, and likely cyber interference, Democrats urgently need a strategic, unified media campaign designed to counter Fox News and other sources of misinformation, as well as denial about what’s at stake in November.  

Unified media advocacy messages for TV talk show pundits, social media posts, blogs, opinion editorials, news stories and political ads all need to employ the same pithy soundbites, display the same effective visuals and use recognizable symbols and tag lines. They must offer solid facts, creative epidemiology, localized messaging, credible sources and charismatic, trusted spokespeople who put a human face on Trumpian tragedies.

A media advocacy campaign must focus solely on the threats the Trump administration presents. Candidates, whose policies don’t differ much, should stop repeating narrow, superficial one-liners on health policy, free education, and the economy. The spotlight must always be on the lies, illegalities and dangers of Donald Trump’s corrupt administration, told in human terms.

“More than 18,000 people are held at any one time by ICE. Over 12,000 of them are traumatized children, many separated from their parents, who will never recover emotionally. That’s equivalent to sixty jumbo jets full of asylum seekers. Here is just one of their stories.   ….”

“The fires that ravaged Australia and destroyed a part of that continent larger than Rhode Island signal irreversible environmental disaster if we don’t act immediately to address global warming.  Here’s what science tells us:…….”  And still the president denies climate change.

“Joe Smith died at age 34 because he couldn’t afford his insulin. The Trump administration should be ashamed, and held accountable.”

There are myriad issues like these from polluted waters, to food safety to plundered national parks, begging for heightened awareness and voter turnout. Raising that awareness and promoting action falls to Democratic messengers. If Democrats fail to provide strategic messages that hit home, voters won’t know what’s happening under the radar because of the Trump administration, and how it affects them.

Focused media campaigns expose neglected issues. They discredit opponents and humanize compelling facts.  They reveal lies. In today’s media environment where brevity is essential, a knockout sound bite -- pithy, memorable, and repeatable—can have a huge impact. So can one whopper of a photo.

Designing a media advocacy campaign calls for seasoned professionals.  Still, “Once you ‘get’ media advocacy, you have to do it or you have to live with the fact that you’re not doing everything you can to make a difference,” as one media advocate put it.  Those words couldn’t be more applicable as we face the great urgency of protecting democracy and ensuring a future grounded in the wisdom of our Constitution. Surely Democrats can identify their Dr. Koop in time. The question is, will they?

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Elayne Clift has a master’s degree in Communication and has worked internationally on numerous media campaigns.

America Faces an Uncertain Future. Why is it Happening?

Having Donald Trump militarize America’s Independence Day, subjecting children and adults to, yes, concentration camps, and defy the courts are not events that can be easily ignored or overlooked.

However, firing climate change scientists or banning them to a Midwest gulag is a lot easier. So is rescinding food and drug safety regulations, rolling back health care protections for LGBTQ patients, foreclosing on working home owners, destroying public education, and compromising the country’s air, water, and wildlife.

There’s more, and it signals the Trump Administration’s dangerous, pro-profit, white supremacist politics, disrespect for the rule of law and the Constitution, and contempt for human rights.  Every day we draw closer to full-fledged fascism while the Democrats diddle, and most mainstream and cable media regurgitate premature political polling while allowing Trump to suck the oxygen out of the air waves.

Collective fatigue and self-preserving denial are understandable, but it’s time every one of us took serious notice of what is happening because a dangerously demented authoritarian, voted into office  - just as Adolf Hitler was - is getting away with murder (literally if you count the dead immigrants at the border) and no one seems able to stop him – not Congress, not the courts, and not the Constitution.

When I first considered writing this commentary, I thought about all the departmental travesties taking place, most without much notice. I began doing research, department by governmental department and that’s how I came upon troubling information at numerous government agencies. Here are just a few examples.

Thanks to an expose by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, I learned that a number of specialists working within a scientific group advising government for nearly sixty years on various issues, including defense and most recently climate change, were being fired. Scientists working on Department of Agriculture issues were given a month’s notice to decide if they would move their families to Kansas – where no facility for them to continue their work exists, or be fired. A short reprieve was issued for scientists working at the Department of Energy so that studies underway could conclude, but the future of the group’s 65 impressive scientists is unclear, even as it diversifies its client base. As the Washington Post pointed out, “Research is being decimated by the Trump team, especially when it comes to climate science and other research that doesn’t comport with the Trump agenda.”

Thanks also go to Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) who called out Ben Carson for failing America’s working families at HUD.  Interviewed by NBC after her tough grilling of Carson in a Congressional committee hearing, Porter said, “I wanted to engage Carson on the critical issue [of foreclosures] but what I got was evasion. Carson’s two-plus years as the leader of HUD have been marked by failure after failure to do right by this country’s working families.” Porter continued, exposing Carson’s total lack of awareness of his agency’s jurisdiction, his claim that “poverty to a large extent is a state of mind,” and his proposal to to slash HUD’s budget.

The National Education Association exposed the horrific record of Betsy De Vos at the Department of Education, where promoting education privatization is a top priority while serving special needs and trans children is being rolled back. DeVos also wants to repeal federal protections that hold predatory for-profit colleges accountable, to rescind sexual assault guidelines, and to put guns in schools.

National Geographic posted “15 Ways the Trump Administration has changed environmental policies,” while The Guardian wrote about the “nosedive” the FDA is taking in warning people about food and drug regulations not being enforced, and Politico revealed how the Trump administration is rolling back health care protections for LGBTQ patients.

The more I learned, the more I realized how much is happening “under the radar” – an expression that sounded familiar. Looking back on my commentary topics over the last 18 months, I realized that I had twice written pieces with that phrase in the title. That made me question not what was happening, but why it was happening.

Here are a few possibilities. One is that many in the Fourth Estate are largely failing to demand and drive accountability. Given that the courts, federal and Supreme, are being stacked against democracy and sound Constitutional interpretation, it is urgent that media editors and producers “call a thing [like racism] a thing.” That means not normalizing a dangerously delusional president or treating him like an ordinary candidate in next year’s election.  It means asking tough questions and demanding answers. It means putting priority issues over advertisers.

Further, the Democratic Party must realize this is no time to pussyfoot. Its strong suite is plurality which must not become its pitfall.  Democrats need to unify, fight, respect boundaries, message wisely, and start saving America. Equally, entities and individuals inside and out of government must vociferously say “No!” when Trump breaks rules, bullies, and acts crazy.

Americans, no matter how tired or disillusioned, must demand leadership that recognizes the slippery slope of looming dark days -- because it’s not only about the economy, jobs and healthcare. It’s about our future and our survival as a democratic beacon to the world.

Perhaps yesterday may have been too early to act, but surely tomorrow will be too late.

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When Acceptance is Not a Virtue

“We should give him a chance.”  “Once he’s in office things may well change.” “America prides itself on ensuring a smooth, orderly transition.”

No! No, no, no!

You don't give plutocrats, oligarchs, or insipient fascists a chance. They don’t change when they win, they only grow bolder, tell more lies, expand and tighten control, find more enemies to attack. That’s why we must call them out every chance we get, right from the get-go!

It’s only mid-December as I write this commentary and there's already enough going on in the so-called presidential transition phase that speaks volumes about what's happening to our democracy, a system of government that is inherently fragile but which we’ve come to assume is immune to dangerous mutation or worse.

What will it take to stop the madness from overcoming us? Why are we being so passive in the face of impending disaster?

As a Facebook friend of mine posted recently, “What would be happening right now if Donald Trump had won more than three million more votes than Hillary Clinton, but Clinton prevailed in the Electoral College? Would he, his supporters, and prominent Republicans have said, “We don’t like the outcome, but that’s how the system works”? Of course not. They’d be screaming bloody murder, they’d be preparing articles of impeachment to file on the day Clinton was inaugurated, they’d be charging that the vote was stolen, they’d be filing lawsuits to overturn (not just recount) the results in every swing state, and Trump would be telling his supporters to use any means necessary to achieve justice.”

Let’s be clear then. It is not acceptable to ignore or diminish the potential impact of the greatest threat this country has ever faced. As Rob Reiner put it on a Sunday morning talk show, "We have a hostile foreign power that has invaded our country. This is enormous and the fact that people aren’t screaming about this, I don’t understand it.” Bombs didn’t fall, Reiner said. No buildings collapsed. “But this [Russian hack] is an invasion of that magnitude. Was Trump colluding with Russian agencies?”

It is not acceptable that the president-elect is threatening to end daily press briefings and to muzzle journalists who write things he doesn’t like. His Barbie-bimbo spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway went to far as to suggest pretty explicitly that there would be retaliation against naysayers.

It is also unacceptable for a president to own his own media company or to be a media executive, to fail to relinquish his business interests, to try to get around nepotism laws so that his children – who are supposedly going to run his not-so-blind trust – can serve as advisors. It should be unacceptable that he has never, and never will, reveal his taxes, or for that matter proper health records.

Speaking of media, it should be totally unacceptable that the mainstream media covered Hillary Clinton’s email server for months but barely touched upon the Russian hacks, or the misdeeds of the FBI director, until they could no longer be ignored. It’s appalling that they never held Donald Trump or his spokespeople’s feet to the fire, but gave him carte blanche when it came to his mass rallies (so reminiscent of those Mussolini like so much) while barely covering his opponent unless she was having a sick day.

It’s also not acceptable that the proposed Trump cabinet is mainly comprised of rich old white men who have no expertise in governance, and in some cases, have publicly vowed to eliminate the agencies they’re being tapped to run. These unqualified people have also denied such realities as climate change and have threatened programs and agencies designed to protect our environment, national parks, health care delivery as well as scientific research and public schools.

It should also be noted that Mr. Trump’s proposed cabinet has more religious bigots, and more generals, than at any other time in modern history. Conversely, it has fewer women or people of color than any administration in recent memory, and no hint of any LBGT or disabled representation.

There are many other commissions, or omissions, one can point to that make what is happening terrifying and unacceptable – among them the possible appointment of an ambassador to Israel who would undoubtedly lead to massive unrest and the growth of ISIS, if not outright war in the Mideast should he succeed in denying a two-state solution and expanding settlements.

This and many other potential disasters should remind us of Elie Wiesel’s idea that there should be an 11th commandment: “Thou shalt not stand idly by.”

So… are we going to practice acceptance until there is no longer a way out? Or are we up for some real organized resistance? For example, will we all identify as Muslim if they are forced to register? Are we prepared to launch national strikes, especially by government workers, teachers, and the like? Can women repeat the strategy of the Greek play, Lysistrata, and refuse to have sex if there is no abortion or birth control available? Do we really mean it when we say, "keep America strong!"

Did we really mean it after the Holocaust when we vowed, “Never again?”

The Archetypal Journey of Hillary Rodham Clinton

Like many other feminists, I tweeted and posted to Facebook at a furious pace after the second presidential debacle that was billed as a debate. “Whether Trump did or did not do what the infamous tape suggested – and I think we all know which is true – the act of celebrating sexual assault as male prerogative and patriarchal power is deplorable,” I wrote. I addressed Trump’s stalking, stuttering and snorting in lieu of substantively addressing policy issues, and I shared my astonishment at his having received good reviews while Hillary Clinton was judged to be off her game for maintaining a calm, polite, focused demeanor in spite of being stalked, verbally abused, threatened with imprisonment, and confronted with the sick stunt perpetrated by her opponent.

Then I read Rebecca Traister’s stunning analysis of the subtext of the debate in New York Magazine and realized how much more there was to consider. Traister, a smart feminist analyst and writer, talked about Donald Trump’s loathing for any woman who might defeat him, and his hideous ways of showing that hatred, including being verbally and physically threatening.  “The worldview that Trump affirmed over and over again, during decades in the public eye, is one in which women are show horses, sexual trophies, and baby machines, and therefore, their agency, consent and participation don’t matter,” she wrote.

Traister continued, condemning Republicans as “a party that has been covert in its cohesion around the very biases that Trump makes course and plain,” referring to their anti-woman legislative agenda, including its attempts to shut down Planned Parenthood and much worse in some states. She pointed out that Republican legislation aimed at disempowering women, and the Republican response to Trump’s gutter talk, reveals a “fundamental lack of recognition of women as full human beings,” not simply mothers, daughters and wives, as they insisted when disavowing their candidate. In the end, Traister said, the weapons of choice among misogynists for beating powerful women are humiliation, objectification, shaming and sexualization. That couldn’t have been made more explicit than by how Donald Trump behaved toward Hillary Clinton during the debate.

No sooner had I finished reading Traister’s compelling article when my daughter called to make another stunning point. “I think Hillary is on an archetypal journey,” she said. “She has to go into that dark place and emerge on the other side intact.”

It was a brilliant observation. Think about it. Women have traditionally been denied The Quest or journey to enlightenment. Locked in their castles birthing future kings, or in convents, where they spent the better part of their lives invisible beyond the cloister gardens, they were denied their hunger for a wider world, their intelligence and courage continually hidden from sight and declared non-existent or illegitimate. Almost the same can be said of women relegated to post-war suburban isolation even though they were, in many cases, well-educated. Many of them who dared to seek a larger role than wife and mother were quickly admonished to go home and make babies when they bravely sought careers.

Two of the most easily recognized female archetypes are the Nurturing Mother and the Temptress. The nurturing mother sustains the warrior on his journey, while the temptress tries to seduce him away from his quest through her sexuality. But now, in Hillary, we have a new female archetype – a warrior woman equal to, and in this case surpassing her male counterpart. She is a warrior capable of undertaking the quest, and emerging intact to win the Golden Fleece.

Another key element of the archetypal journal involves entering into and surviving the Underworld, often a dark cave.  Hillary Clinton has had to survive the darkest of caves in an underworld full of deranged men and incipient violence. A good many male warriors might have given up in comparable circumstances, but she persevered, intent on making it back to the light. Luckily, along the way she has had good Mentors to help her overcome the ever-present obstacles of the arduous journey she has undertaken.

Among the many symbols of the classic Archetypal Journey are mountains, water, serpents and rainbows. Hillary Clinton still has some murky waters to wade through, waters that are home to snakes continually lashing out at her. But when she finally gets to the other side of the river and ascends the mountain there is likely to be a rainbow of colors there. Many of us will be standing with her, relieved and hopeful once more, able to see the world as a place of safety and beauty again.

We will all be changed by the experience. Sometimes that’s all it takes to reach a more enlightened way of being.

Marching Toward Dystopia

Marching Toward Dystopia

It’s hard to believe, given Donald Trump’s constant and egregious lies, his frequent name-calling and hate speech, his puerile tongue lashings, his visible ineptitude, and his recent debate performance, that he can be viewed as a serious threat to Hillary Clinton’s election in November. Issues and behavior that would have brought down any other candidate, ranging from imitating a disabled reporter to insulting a Gold Star family to being involved in three serious lawsuits, to refusing to reveal his taxes or professional health reports should have stopped him long ago. So should his inability to discuss policy priorities with any depth and his pugilistic, pro-Putin posturing. Yet, here we are as I write this commentary, nail-biting our way through every new poll and prediction, scratching our heads about how this looming disaster could possibly be happening.

Whatever the inevitable political and psychological post-mortems reveal, one thing is frighteningly real: Donald Trump has exposed and unleashed the underbelly of American society, releasing into the ether rampant racism, virulent anti-Semitism, overt hatred of “the Other,” including Muslims, and frightening violence borne by those whose world view he represents - people so full of animus toward human beings who don’t look, think or act like themselves that Hillary Clinton was honest enough to call them “deplorable,” a descriptor verified by polls questioning any standard of decency among other Americans.

Noted political commentator Rebecca Traister saw trouble coming during the Republican convention. She wrote,” What we have seen … is the Republican Party offering its stage and its imprimatur to speakers who have not appeared reluctant or conflicted, but rather buoyed and energized by the way in which Trump’s candidacy has allowed them to come out as inciters of sexist, racist, violent mob action and xenophobic fearmongering. What’s more, by framing their hateful rhetoric in terms of patriotism, they are reminding us that much of the poison in this country runs deep.”

The kind of indecency and poison that Trump spawns and encourages is all too clear when his son says we should be “firing up the ovens.” It is clear when white supremacists pride themselves on finally being legitimate within the public arena while wearing white hoods and waving Nazi or confederate flags. It is more than clear when a 69-year old woman on oxygen is physically assaulted at a Trump rally by one of his supporters.  

The examples of hate-filled rhetoric and behavior among Trump supporters abound in social media, if not in most of the mainstream press, which has been woefully inadequate in its coverage of Trump’s mania. Even should he lose the election “the message of hatred and paranoia that is inciting millions of voters will outlast the messenger [and] the toxic effects of Trumpism will have to be addressed,” a New York Times editorial noted. Those effects include documented increases in bullying in schools and increases in anti-Semitic and other hate crimes. 

Analogies drawn between Trump and Hitler, considered in bad taste and reluctantly shared to make clear similarities in terms of their political strategies, may still be useful. To quote Robert Paxton, an authority on fascism, in Slate.com recently, “The use of ethnic stereotypes and exploitation of fear of foreigners is directly out of a fascist’s recipe book. ‘Making the country great again’ sounds exactly like the fascist movements. Concern about national decline was one of the most prominent emotional states evoked in fascist discourse, and Trump is using that full-blast, quite illegitimately … . That is a fascist stroke. An aggressive foreign policy to arrest the supposed decline [is] another one. Then, there’s a second level, [one] of style and technique. … [he is] like Mussolini … the bluster, the skill at sensing the mood of the crowd, the skillful use of media.” 

In light of the terrifying specter before us should Trump prevail, the challenge for those who understand how close we could be to a dystopian future is convincing people who don’t like Hillary that they have to vote for her anyway. I’ve tried and it’s not easy. Some of them don’t get that democracy resides in participation and that without voting they are colluding with a possible Trump win that could mean we enter into an inconceivable Draconian age. Some of them think he’s not as bad as the show he puts on. Some of them just don’t seem to care.

How did so many people whose very interests and futures are at stake become so apathetic and deluded? That is perhaps a question for another time.

Right now what matters urgently is that as many people as possible vote, which means that all of us experiencing cold sweats ratchet up the dialogue, knock on doors, argue with our right-leaning friends, do whatever it takes to shine light on what the options are: Either we vote smart and elect Hillary, or we dig in our heels and hope to survive years of dictatorial disaster. 

Want to know what that feels like? Ask anyone whose lived under Saddam Hussein, Assad, Romania’s Ceaușescu, and now Mr. Erdogan of Turkey.  It’s not a pretty picture. As Trump would say, “Believe me.”

Days of Drought: A Landscape of Desperate Times

The photographs are difficult to see. Receded murky waters reveal river beds that resemble threadbare ancient shrouds. Earth once fertile lies cracked and brown like mosaics now devoid of their artful tiles, the missing grout leaving gaping. mazed striations.  In Thailand, India, African countries, even in Central America and Poland, the earth is browning, farmers are losing their livelihoods, thirst is taking hold, economies are struggling, political instability threatens. Societies are drying up.

In the wake of Donald Trump becoming the Republican nominee, and the terrifying prospect that he could actually become president, the dark days of drought seem like a stark, strange and alarming metaphor for the browning of America, a phrase meant to allude to the brown-shirted storm troopers of fascist Germany. 

Take a hard look at what’s going on in America. 

We are now a nation in which legislation has been proposed or passed that discriminates against the civil and human rights of immigrants, the LBGTI community, blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, and women. Some states have moved to legislate where you can pee, or people to whom you can deny services.

Some have moved to criminalize or deny abortion, even though it is still a constitutional right, and some have proposed or enacted laws that can put a woman in jail for murder if she suffers a miscarriage. That’s a Draconian measure reminiscent of Romania’s (assassinated) 1980s dictator,  Nicolae Ceaușescu, who forced women to undergo monthly pelvic exams to ensure that pregnancies were carried to term. (It resulted in huge numbers of children abandoned to orphanages so poorly run that development disabilities were rampant.)

Gun violence, police brutality and other forms of institutionally sanctioned killings take place every day in this country, while the sponsor-driven media seems to be stuck in its own brain-dead “brand.”

 In short, we are witnessing the drying up of a society once thought (somewhat erroneously) to be a democratic icon as it approaches its own demise. It’s a society, and a once-proudly diverse culture, that now appears to be devoid of the ability to govern, to engage in civil discourse, to show compassion or intelligence, and to behave respectfully, let alone humanely. We are, it seems to many, decidedly on the brink and facing a disintegrating future as Donald Trump continues to spew invectives and to reveal his utter incompetence as his poll numbers rise.

There are those who are loathe to compare Trump’s victory and possible presidency to Hitler’s totalitarian regime, but look at their similarities: Both ran campaigns grounded in fear-mongering based on hate, economic frailty and stereotyped, scapegoated minorities, both were anti-woman (Hitler believed women’s national loyalty resided in bearing as many babies as possible), both fostered incipient violence, and both were authoritarian and dangerously devoid of reason.

There’s another comparison that some have called upon to sound a note of caution and that is the fall of the Roman Empire.  Scholars point out that the causes of the Empire’sdownfall included an antagonistic relationship between the Senate (their Congress) and the Emperor (President), rampant political corruption, heavy military spending, a failing economy, and a decline in ethics and values. It is also be worth mentioning that slave labor (income inequality) was a factor, as were natural disasters (like drought).  As one source put it, “Life became cheap … and judgments about what was valuable or important in life declined. There was a total disregard for human and animal life.”

As I was mulling this commentary over in my mind, I happened to read a sentence in a clever, somewhat bizarre novel call The Wallcreeper by Nell Zink. It’s a riff on everything from politics and social activism to sex, marriage and the quest for a meaningful life. The sentence that jumped out at me read:  “The injustice of mortal existence cried out with greed for euphoria.”  It was followed by, “Delicacy had no place in [his] world.”

Donald Trump is playing on people’s desperation for euphoria, it seems to me. But delicacy has no place in his world. Neither do facts, fair play, intelligence, good judgment or any of the other critical attributes required for sound, safe, humane leadership. 

Those attributes are like tributaries that flow into a flourishing river. When they go dry, so does the river that carries our commerce, feeds our fields, quenches our thirst, and keeps us civilized.  America simply cannot allow the river to become dry. Our future depends upon the metaphorical waters that give life, today and for a long time to come.

That’s why Donald Trump must not win in November.

A Frightening Move to the Right in the US and Elsewhere

Anyone who saw Donald Trump asking for a Hitler-like salute to accompany a vote pledge from his supporters, or watched an angry follower elbow-punch a protester in the face, should realize that if he were to take the White House, we would all be in deep trouble. Trump’s behavior, ideas and political rants are outrageous and alarming.

But make no mistake: we’d be in trouble if any Republican candidate were to win the election. Trump’s opponents espouse much of the same policy claptrap when pressed; they just use softer language and forego violently throwing protesters out of the room with the Stalinist vigor of the frontrunner. The party of the right has helped fuel the escalation in violence and vitriol we are experiencing. They’ve done nothing to put a lid on what’s happening and they continue to support Trump in the election. They have never disavowed his accusations about the President’s birthplace. They’ve refused to pass legislation the president proposes and they have never treated Mr. Obama with respect.

Even more worrying than the fascist machinations of the authoritarian Republican poll leader is the numbers of people flocking to his events cheering on his stereotypical scapegoating.  The hate inherent in Trump supporters is a scary reminder that a lot of Americans stand on shaky ground.

We are not alone in the fact that about half our population is dangerously right wing.

Recently Spain’s conservative government strengthened laws originally aimed at controlling separatists. The laws resulted in the arrest of puppeteers who used a political play on words at a Carnival show and the prosecution of a musician and a poet whose work suggested criticism of the government, all in the name of fighting terrorism. Maximum prison sentences for such infractions have been increased and a new “gag law” penalizes unauthorized public demonstrations.

Even before the Paris attacks in November last year France reinforced a similar gag law to punishes statements deemed to be inciting terrorism. Since the attacks on Charlie Hebdo, French authorities have moved to enforce the law and have been accused of rushing to convict people who may have spoken provocatively outside the realm of terrorism.

Other European nations, both east and west, have also enacting broad and troubling laws, some aimed at maintaining a leader’s control, others at limiting political speech as fears of Islamic extremism rise. Germany, for example, is showing serious signs of moving right in view of the Merkel government’s welcoming of refugees.

In Turkey, the Erdogan government recently seized the largest circulation newspaper in the country which had been critical of his leadership. Within 48 hours it was publishing pro-Erdogan propaganda. In shutting down the press police acted after a court in Istanbul placed the paper under the administration of selected Trustees without explanation. The editor of the paper was fired and Turkish sources reported that the paper’s online archive was being eradicated. This action is just the latest move by the authoritarian Erdogan, who has imprisoned critics, jailed journalists, and gone back to war with the Kurds. Oh, and it’s now illegal to insult Mr. Erdogan. Nearly 2,000 cases for that crime were filed over the last year and a half.

The New York Times, in reporting events in Turkey, noted that “it is unsettling that the US and Europe have responded so meekly to Mr. Erdogan’s trampling of a free press.” It’s also unsettling that EU countries are not willing to bear any responsibility for trapped refugees. The challenges of resettlement are huge, of course, but part of the reason no country wants to help the teaming masses is an almost hysterical fear of terrorism, which seems to have trumped (no pun intended) human rights and compassion.

In Poland, the ultra-conservative government has cleared the way for hard line legal changes, including a likely total ban on abortion and further curbs on gender and human rights. Their constitutional tribunal, the country’s highest legislative court, is losing its independence thanks to the Law and Justice Party’s win last year – a Party aligned with hostility toward migrants.

Meanwhile, Israel continues its trek right. A Pew Research Center report issued in March found that almost half of all Israeli Jews want to see the transfer or expulsion of the country’s Palestinian population. For the past decade or more racist ideas have gained power in Israel, scholars point out, powered by ultra-Orthodox rabbis and other fundamentalists. This attitude has led to attacks on Palestinians as well as women and gay activists, some of which have resulted in barely punished homicides. And still the illegal building of settlements continues, basically assuring that a two-state solution can never prevail.

As we grapple with our current political landscape as well as the debate over First Amendment rights vs. national security spawned by Apple’s refusal to unlock a terrorist’s iPhone, we need to be mindful of the full picture, and the real threats, surrounding civil rights here and elsewhere. Never has it been truer that “no man [or country] is an island.” The shift right in so many countries, possibly including ours, is perhaps the most important issue we will be forced to grapple with in coming days. Let’s not think, as many Germans did, “It could never happen here.”  It could. And it well might if we are not both vigilant and smart.