BIDEN OFFERS A LESSON IN HUMILITY AND SERVICE AND HARRIS A MASTER CLASS IN ETHICS AND PROFESSIONALISM

 For the past fifty-two years, Joe Biden has distanced himself from other politicians in taking the moral high ground at the service of his country and democracy. Elected to the Senate when he was barely thirty, his long political career has been bookended by personal tragedy—the deaths in 1972 of his first wife Neilia and their infant daughter Naomi in a car crash a month after he became a senator, and the death of his rising-star politician son Beau of brain cancer in 2015, when, as the incumbent vice president, Joe Biden was first considering running for the presidency—a dream quashed not only by his son’s tragic death but also by a call from then-President Obama for him to stand down in deference to Hillary Clinton.

In both cases, Biden put country over self, overcame his own immense personal sorrow, and concentrated on how best to serve his country. Biden has been, over the years, the embodiment of John F. Kennedy’s dictum: “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” In the first case, the junior senator became famous for commuting by train between his home in Delaware and his job in Washington as a means of taking care of both the business of government and his duties to his two surviving and motherless children, Beau and Hunter. In the second, he put aside his grief and the sting of his former boss’s having passed him over in favor of Clinton, and threw his hat into the ring for the presidency in the 2020 election, with the well-placed conviction that he and his long experience in government would be sufficient for him to defeat Donald Trump after Hillary Clinton lost her bid to do the same in 2016.

In hindsight, had Obama thrown his support behind his vice president in 2016, perhaps this would have been President Biden’s second term in office rather than his first, and we would not have had to witness the chaos and disarray into which the political arena has been thrown by questions regarding his age, health and suitability for continuing as president. More importantly, perhaps Donald Trump would have been a mere flash in the pan and the US would not have had to endure the dire consequences of his narcissistic, authoritarian machinations and his clear and present threats to democracy. But we’ll never know. Maybe, however, this is part of the reason that former President Obama is being so circumspect this time around.

Once again, this past weekend, we saw President Joe Biden put his country and party before his own personal wishes and goals. Despite his burning desire to remain in office for another four years and continue the job he had started, as well as staving off the unmistakable threat to democracy of another Trump presidency, he faced the hard and painful fact that he had, because of his age and failing acuity, lost the confidence of many Democratic voters and Independents, as well as of many of even his staunchest supporters within the party itself. In light of this, he seems to have clearly seen that his continued candidacy might well bring another victory for Trump and end up being the death knell for American democracy as we know it. As such, he last Sunday withdrew his bid for a second term and threw his full support behind his vice president, Kamala Harris.

While Harris has been something of an enigma and, for some, a disappointment as vice president, one could make the case that she is largely misunderstood. The vice president is a politically savvy person of truly superior intelligence, as she has clearly shown throughout her political career in California—both as a firebrand prosecutor and as state attorney general—and as a Senator for that state. Personally, I see her as a very sharp and capable poker player as well. 

A case in point. During the presidential primary debates for the 2020 election, as Joe Biden’s rival on the debate stage, she did the unthinkable and challenged him on his stellar record as a civil rights activist. She made it personal as well as political. Harris challenged Biden, saying that she wanted to make a point on “the issue of race.” She then prefaced her remarks by saying that she didn’t believe him to be a racist, but quickly went on to criticize him for making “very hurtful” statements about how he had worked with segregationist senators in opposition during the nineteen-seventies and eighties to a federal busing mandate.

Biden had made his comments in the context of his being someone who knew how to work across the aisle in Congress as a means to an end, even when in general disagreement with the other lawmakers’ politics. But Harris demonstrated that politics were about more than policy victories. They had real consequences that affected real people. And to bring the point home, she said, “There was a little girl in California who was a part of the second class to integrate her public schools and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me.”

The statement caught Biden off guard and forced him into a half-truth when he countered saying his stance was being mischaracterized, adding that, “I did not oppose busing in America. What I opposed is busing ordered by the Department of Education.” In the days that followed, the statement was fact-checked repeatedly and found to be false. In point of fact, the record showed that Senator Biden had been a staunch opponent of busing on principle, and not simply when ordered by the federal government. The exchange had served Harris well and showed her to be a force to be reckoned with.

Had Biden and Harris been different people than they were, it could have ended there, with Harris returning to the Senate and Biden going on to be president of the United States. Instead, however, it seems clear that Biden respected Harris for challenging his largely deserved record as a champion of civil rights and highly likely also felt it was better to have her in his corner than as a challenger. Or perhaps he felt the best way to heal the blow she had dealt him on race relations was to choose her—a highly capable woman of color—to be his running mate—the first woman, the first black and the first Asian in history to ascend to the vice presidency of the United States. Whatever the case may be, it is clear that Biden chose her because she was the most capable to serve in the post. The points he gained in race relations and ethnicity issues were an added perk, and it turned out to be a match made in heaven.

Of course, all of that is anathema to the openly racist and sexist MAGA Republican leadership. Just forty-eight hours after Joe Biden withdrew from the race and threw all of his support behind the vice president, Harris has come under both racist and sexist attacks. The GOP dog whistle for these attacks as voiced by Texas Republican Senator Chip Roy, for instance, is DEI. Many of us would have to rush to the Urban Dictionary to even know what the initials stood for—diversity, equity, and inclusion. Used in the best sense of the term, DEI refers to policies which seek to promote the fair treatment and full participation of all people, particularly groups who have historically been underrepresented or subject to discrimination on the basis of identity or disability. But in the mouths of MAGA racists like Roy, it becomes a racist and sexist epithet.

Tennessee GOP Representative Tim Burchett got even uglier a day after Biden backed the VP, not only calling her “a DEI hire”, but also recalling that President Biden had said he would pick a black woman as his running mate and wondering aloud, “What about white females? What about any other group?” This could no longer be referred to as a “dog whistle”. This was venturing to say the blatant racist part out loud. And by mentioning white “females”, he was also seeking to lower the status of women to their gender identity rather than seeing them as persons or individuals of equal weight in government and all other walks of life.

On X, Burchett tweeted: “The incompetency level is at an all-time high in Washington. The media propped up this president, lied to the American people for three years, and then dumped him for our DEI vice president.”

Doubling down when questioned by CNN’s Manu Raju, he said, “Biden said he’s gonna hire a Black female for vice president. What about white females? What about any other group? When you go down that route, you take mediocrity and that’s what they have right now as a vice president.” He reiterated on questioning by Raju that he believed Kamala Harris to be, basically, a token black as vice president, saying, “One hundred percent she was a DEI hire.”

Ex-president Donald Trump himself piled on at his Doral Golf Club in Florida, saying that “If Joe had picked someone halfway competent, they would have bounced him from office years ago. But they can’t because she’s their second choice.”

There is really no way to see any of this as any less shocking and egregious than it clearly is. But the impropriety of this sort of racist and sexist talk is rendered even more ironic and hypocritical considering that Trump’s own pick for the VP slot, J.D. Vance, has all of about five minutes of political experience. And his only claim to fame is of having been a failed hedge fund manager and having written a book about his hillbilly upbringing that caught on and became a bestseller. Somewhere along the line, he met up with far-right-wing tech-billionaire Peter Thiel, who became his political mentor and financial backer, and the rest is history—five minutes of history.

Trump clearly picked Vance because he was sure to appeal to the former president’s far-right, white, evangelical base, not because of any political or technical skill sets he brought to the table. So questioning the current vice president’s political background and acumen seems quite rich coming from Trump, whose own pick is so incredibly incompetent to serve. Especially if the Trump ticket should win the election only to have something happen to Trump while in office that requires his vice president to stand in for him. If Trump was, is and always will be a government outsider who plays everything by ear and based on his gut, Vance is a total novice, who basically hasn’t the slightest idea how the world works.

It seems that in the ever more authoritarianized and dominant MAGA wing of the GOP,  Vice President Harris’s career as a renowned, high-profile prosecutor, as the attorney general of the most populous and most politically and economically powerful state in the union, as a senator for that state, and as vice president to a man who has had one of the longest and most storied careers in American politics are insufficient credentials to keep the Alt-Right from characterizing her as anything but “a black female” and “a DEI hire.” Fortunately, Harris’s stellar education, long political experience, maturity, poise, ethics and intelligence are far more than enough to render such characterizations ridiculous. This is especially true considering the incredibly dubious credentials of the two men she and her ticket-mate will be running against—one a convicted felon and insurrectionist, and the other an absolute newbie in the world of politics.

In short, a prosecutor running against a criminal should make for an interesting election.

Contrary to what many critics have suggested, Harris has also played her cards incredibly well and close to her vest as vice president. She has been there in whatever capacity the president has needed her to be, offering her intelligence, experience and hard work to help find solutions to problems the administration has sought to remedy. The rest of the time she has been a friend and close collaborator to the president, a sounding board for his ideas, treating him with utmost respect, and doing her job without ever seeking to second-guess or overshadow the office Biden holds.

In her role as vice president, she has taken a major political risk by taking charge of anything the president pushed her way. Thus, she found herself overseeing the thorny issues of COVID response, voting rights, women’s reproductive rights and civil rights in general. She was also handed the explosive package of issues surrounding the border crisis. This is the issue on which the GOP is now seeking to hammer her, despite the fact that, thanks to actions taken by the Biden administration, border crossings are significantly lower than previous highs. Furthermore, the GOP is seeking to saddle Harris with the blame for continuing difficulties at the Mexican border, when the remaining crisis is largely of the Republicans’ own doing. That is to say, Donald Trump’s doing.

It is public knowledge that the Biden administration—to a large extent thanks to the brokering efforts of Kamala Harris—managed to cobble together an historic bipartisan legislative package to effectively deal with the border crisis. But that deal never made it into law for one simple reason. Donald Trump kicked over the negotiating table, badgering his MAGA lawmakers into backing the GOP away from the deal. He made no bones about the fact that such a deal could very well prove successful, and he didn’t want to “give” that sort of win to the Biden administration, basically telling GOP lawmakers to hold off until he was president again so he could take the victory lap for a border security package created through the efforts of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and the most reasonable lawmakers in the GOP.   

Most important of all, however, has been the ethical capital that Harris has displayed as VP. She has shown unbending loyalty to the president throughout recent months in which he has been increasingly criticized for what people on both sides of the aisle have seen as his failing physical strength and mental acuity. No matter how politically devastating the attacks have been, the presidency and vice-presidency have demonstrated a monolithic front against all comers. In other words, despite having a shot at the presidency within her grasp, Harris has shown herself to be of the highest political and ethical pedigree, a person of honor and loyalty despite her soaring political and intellectual acumen, and her clear desire to serve as president of the United States.

That said, however, she also has been savvy enough to have her ducks in a row if called upon to serve, and within twenty-four hours of President Biden’s decision to withdraw from the 2024 race, she had consolidated overwhelming support among nearly all major figures in the Democratic Party and had garnered such incredible grassroots support that her campaign raised an all-time record eighty million dollars in a single day. This stupendous show of support has left Democrats who were pushing for a “mini-primary” dangling, with their feet kicking in the air. And it has rendered utterly ridiculous and caricaturesque the tentative challenge by Independent (quasi-Republican) Senator Joe Machin, who said he might re-register as a Democrat and go head-to-head with Harris, whom he considers “far-left”, which just goes to show how extremely far-right he is, despite presuming to call himself a centrist.

Sadder still was Manchin’s apparent ignorance of the fact that this election has become one in which age has loomed as a major issue, with the vast majority of Americans—and especially America’s youth—feeling discouraged that they were once again being given a binary boomer choice between two men who would either be, or would become, octogenarians while in office. Joe Manchin, who will turn seventy-seven next month, falls squarely within this rejected profile as well. This also casts a funereal pall over the third-party bid of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., himself a septuagenarian, much of whose momentum has been based on the otherwise unsavory choice between Trump and Biden, especially since RFK Jr.’s campaign sounds basically like MAGA without Trump.

In the end, after months in which the shadow of an election where—despite President Biden’s extraordinary service to the country—the best voters could hope for was “the lesser of two evils,” Americans have been in a somber and hopeless mood. But with the arrival of Kamala Harris on the electoral scene, the clouds have suddenly started to lift for both Democrats and a large segment of independent voters. The political scene is being very quickly injected with a new dose of energy and promise. There is now a very genuine choice between more of the chaotic, hate-filled Trump era that we know will just be more of the same, and a new political energy led by a mature and experienced, yet still young and dynamic presidential candidate whose entire career has been devoted to democracy and the rule of law.

Suddenly, Donald Trump is the only grumpy ol’ man in the race. And MAGA’s barrage of open insults, racism and sexism demonstrates just how suddenly off-kilter and desperate they are.   

 

THE CASE FOR A JOHN WILKES BOOTH MONUMENT

The long-standing controversy over glorification of the Confederacy and its part in the War Between the States that ensued as a result of its declaration of secession from the Union has boiled over under the Donald Trump presidency as a result of the administration’s arguments—and redoubled arguments—favoring monuments to the leading proponents of slavery and the continued use of the Confederate stars and bars flag as an acceptable symbol of pride among the staunchest supporters in his base. I’ve tended to oppose that position as divisive and improper at a time when we should be moving toward less animosity among Americans rather than more, and toward genuine racial equality and justice in a country that used to pride itself on being the “greatest democracy on earth.”

John Wilkes Booth equestrian model

As growing calls have come for the removal of all symbols that continue to glorify the cause of slavery, which led to a tragic conflict in which hundreds of thousands of Americans were slaughtered, I, like all thoughtful citizens, have had to weigh indoctrination against genuine history and challenge learned ideas regarding the validity of any historical interpretation that in any way praises or immortalizes the leaders and symbols of a nefarious movement to continue to enslave an entire race of people, even at the cost of the dissolution of the United States of America.

I’ve concluded and argued repeatedly that we have to stop glorifying the Confederacy, which was a seditious anti-American movement that sought to overthrow the United States and form a new country whose basic founding tenet was the enslavement of Africans and African Americans. I’ve posited that officers of the US Army who rose up against their commander-in-chief and formed a new enemy army that engaged in civil war against the US were traitors and deserved execution rather than glory.

I have also proposed that requiring the African American soldiers and officers who today wear the uniform of their country to serve daily on military bases named after generals who enslaved their ancestors and fought to keep them enslaved forever is a gross injustice. And that forcing black children to play in parks named after—and in the shadows of monuments to—the very leaders of a seditious and illicit Confederate association that, if it had had its way, would still be enslaving them today is perverse. I’ve also expressed my conclusion that flying the flag that symbolizes the Confederacy in the United States is tantamount to flying the swastika in Poland.

However, some people on the social media continue to take me to task for being a vile revisionist who wants to re-write history and cut out the parts I don't like. To them, I argue that they are mistaken. I have no desire to “sanitize history.” On the contrary, I feel that it is sanitized enough already. I just want history to be history, rather than a fairy-tale designed to exculpate the white majority and to whitewash (pun intended) a part of our history that should be a source of abject and unmitigated national shame and that seeks to make it seem as if there were "some very fine people" on both sides of the conflict, which, perhaps, “wasn't about slavery after all.”

John Wilkes Booth fountain model

But okay. I've always been willing to keep an open mind in the course of debate. And maybe, for the sake of argument, I should try admitting that my critics are right. Maybe we should just “get a life”, stop looking for controversy at every turn and take a very kumbaya attitude toward the Confederacy, its symbols and its heroes. Maybe we should continue to honor them for fighting for what they believed in (albeit slavery), even though it ripped the country apart and left us with a legacy of racial hatred and violence that continues up to the present day.

In fact, maybe like President Trump, we need to double down on this kind of  acquiescence to racism and the causes of the long-defunct Confederacy. So I have an egalitarian proposal to make. And if there are some among you who have the gumption, I think it might be a good idea to create a petition to try and get the president involved. I think you might be pleasantly surprised if you do, since it’s not unreasonable (nothing is anymore) to think that he might act on it.

So here's the idea: How about, in order to honor the sensibilities of the president, his entourage and his base, if we build a monument to a truly unsung hero of the Confederacy? More concretely, let's petition President Trump to use taxpayer dollars to give credit where credit is due and commission a large equestrian statue or fountain as a monument to John Wilkes Booth, the pro-slavery gentleman who shot and killed President Abraham Lincoln—certainly one of the most important events of the entire Civil War era.

And in order to ensure fairness to the Confederacy, we (the people) should suggest that this work of historical art and significance be placed at the foot of the steps to the Lincoln Memorial. Fair is fair, and Booth was, after all, a real hero to many of the people of the Confederate South who had just been cruelly defeated by the Union under Lincoln, who, through the Emancipation Proclamation brought an end to the golden age of the slave-holding South.

Any takers?

SOME THINGS NEVER SEEM TO CHANGE

In 1970, I was an Army Specialist 4 posted to the 72nd Army Band at Ft. MacArthur in Los Angeles. We played a lot of “public relations” concerts and parades. One, while I was there, was in the troubled neighborhood of Watts. I can’t recall the occasion, but it was a military parade.

Watts 1965

Midway through our march across town, we had to break ranks and it was every man for himself as we were pelted with cans, bottles and anything else angry protesters could heave at us. I was told the protest was over the disproportionate number of African Americans being sent to Vietnam. With the help of LA County law enforcement, we were able to push back until we could reach our bus and leave.

Although I considered myself socially aware, it was the first time the vast difference between my life and that of minorities in inner city neighborhoods was driven home. Our first sergeant, who was out front, was African American and had grown up in Compton. So was our second-ranking NCO, who was from a dirt-poor childhood in Alabama. So were several other members of the band. But what the protesters saw were our uniforms, which represented the government that didn't represent them.

Not personal, just the uniform

My friend Fermin, who before entering the Army had been a member of the Black Panthers, patiently explained it to me. It wasn't personal. I was a symbol. And it didn't matter how non-racist or liberal I might be, or how much I strived to understand and empathize with the black cause. To the rioters, none of that mattered since they faced daily discrimination simply because of the color of their skin. It was something, he explained, that no matter home empathic I might be, I could never fully understand or “own” because I was white.

And then there was the context. Five years earlier Watts had been the scene of The Watts riots, sometimes called the Watts Rebellion. They were sparked, as the current ones rocking the US, by police abuse of minority citizens' civil and human rights. They broke out after police physically assaulted a pregnant, black motorist, who happened to also be a parolee, after pulling her over for reckless driving. When community members in Watts publicly decried the incident, six days of civil unrest ensued.

Minneapolis 2020

Nearly four thousand members of the California Army National Guard—hence, the hatred for Army green—helped suppress the disturbance, which resulted in thirty-four deaths and over forty million dollars worth of property damage. It was the city's worst unrest until the Rodney King riots—for the exact same reason—twenty-seven years later.

And still today, as US cities are again in flames over the brutal police murder of George Floyd—nothing ever seems to change. On the contrary, over the course of the last three and a half years, the situation has been vastly exacerbated by a federal administration that is openly racist and blatantly disrespectful of civil and human rights.

MARA: MAKING AMERICA RACIST AGAIN

US President Donald Trump's retweeting this week of an atrociously photo-shopped meme of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in Middle Eastern garb with the Iranian flag behind them does little to harm his intended political targets. In fact, they can use it to their advantage in pointing to just how immature, unhinged, unethical and clueless the president really is.

But the problem with this is that Trump no longer represents just the bad-boy Donald of New York real estate infamy, but the presidency (and, hence, the people) of the United States. And the problem with the retweeted meme itself is this: It is racist. It is a racial and religious hate tweet for which other Twitter users might be thrown off the platform. It suggests that all Iranians and all followers of Islam are terrorists. It reinforces his mad-dog base's prejudice against Muslims and it subliminally encourages them to take action against non-Christians and Middle Eastern peoples in general, as well as against Democrats, who Trump surrogates are seeking to link with fanatical Islamist terrorism.

This sort of thing is par for the course for Bigot-in-Chief Donald Trump, but it is totally unworthy and completely inappropriate for the office of the presidency, whose job it is to govern for and to protect all Americans equally. 

The meme's message makes already threatened Muslims still less safe than they were before in the Era of Trump, by clearly demonstrating the president's prejudice against them.If a common citizen were to do something like this at school he or she would be expelled. And if they did it at work, they would be fired. But when this sort of blatant race-baiting comes from the White House (this White House), it's just "Trump being Trump" and gets a pass. Why? Because, over the last three years in the Era of Trump, we have, unfortunately, become all too accustomed to a scandalously low bar that has been set for the presidency. 

There has never been a president like Trump before, a man in the Oval Office who appears to be completely bereft of humanity, of social propriety, of racial, religious and political tolerance, of democratic fervor and of human empathy. The problem is twofold and projects a long shadow, because it sets a precedent for the behavior of future leaders, who, in accordance with the principle of "whataboutism", will always be able to point to "what Trump got away with" in order to justify their own crass disregard for political correctness, for democracy and for the Constitution, and to exonerate them for their own general misdeeds. 

When they do, we will no longer be able to use the argument that this was just "Trump being Trump", because whoever the future bad-actor president might be can always say, "Yes, and this is just me being me. Get used to it!" 

Perhaps this should be one of numerous pieces of evidence on which to base another article of impeachment: Conspiring to incite racial, religious and political violence among Americans.

TRUMP IS NOT (just) A RACIST

US President Donald Trump is not a racist. Or at least that’s not all that he is. His is, rather, a misanthrope, an equal-opportunity hater, who can always find something bad to say about just about anybody.

Well, no, not quite. Actually, he can find something awful to say about anyone decent and admirable (John McCain, Barack Obama, Angela Merkel and Meryl Streep spring to mind), or anyone who criticizes or disagrees with him (as long as they are allies or former allies of the United States), or anyone who is a Democrat (or a democrat), or anyone Muslim (other than Saudi Prince Mohammad bin Salman), or anyone Jewish (with the exception of Bibi Netanyahu and “short guys that wear yarmulkes” and count his money), or any foreign-born person (other than his wife and her parents) living in the US, or anyone gay, or anyone who doesn’t look like or sound like they just came from participating in a Ku Klu Klan rally.

Incited racism...The crowd chanted, "Send her back!"

But in all fairness, there are those about whom he seldom if ever has anything bad to say, people who, by his own admission, he really admires—read: Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un, Rodrigo Duterte, even the late Benito Mussolini, authoritarians that he would like to be “when he grows up.”

If he weren’t the president of the United States, he could be as racist, bigoted and misanthropic as he liked in his speech (it would indeed be his right to free, if repugnant, expression), and it wouldn’t matter one iota. But he is. And it does.

During the Civil Rights Era of half a century ago, back when I was growing up in my small, all-white, Midwestern home town, it was not uncommon to witness how prominent members of our homogeneous community would blithely ignore the fact that most African American people’s roots in the US stretched back much further than their own Scots-Irish and German immigrant “pedigree” and would suggest that if blacks, who were demanding that their constitutional rights be respected, didn’t like it in America, they could “go back to Africa.”

Sound familiar? It should, because that’s precisely what the president suggested four congresswomen of color should do this past week. And until Trump took office and declared political correctness a thing of the past, this would have been discriminatory and an example of hate-speech.

Indeed, in most workplaces, it still would be considered discriminatory, and the perpetrator would be subject to reprimand, suspension or dismissal. In fact, it is a patent example of potentially unlawful language when it creates a threatening atmosphere in the workplace. Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, ethnic slurs and other verbal or physical abuse due to nationality are illegal if they are severe or pervasive and create an intimidating, hostile or offensive working environment, interfere with work performance, or negatively affect job opportunities. Examples of potentially unlawful conduct include insults, taunting, or ethnic epithets, such as making fun of a person’s foreign accent or comments like, specifically, “Go back to where you came from,” whether made by supervisors or by co-workers.

The Squad

In clear reference to US-born citizens, women of color and Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) and (especially) to Somali-born Ilhan Omar (D-MN) a naturalized citizen who has lived in the US since childhood, Trump attacked the four elected representatives for their critical views of US policies saying that if they didn’t like it in America, “Why don't they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” 

Some people have tried to argue that Trump isn’t really a racist. That he only uses racism to energize his base, since, he figures, most of his base is indeed racist. But I’m not very sure that the president isn’t a blatant racist, and if he isn’t, then saying something like this simply for effect is even more criminal, because, if that’s true, then his purpose in saying it is to incite hatred and violence. Indeed, Congresswoman Omar has been receiving death threats for some time, and they spiked following Trump’s latest racist tweet. As was amply covered by the media, at a rally that he held this past week in North Carolina, the president clearly mentioned Congresswoman Omar’s name as a crowd-teaser and a buzzword, and the response was immediate. Members of his base in the crowd started chanting “Send her back! Send her back!” As they did, Trump stood idly by and let the racist chants go on, while he postured like Mussolini on the podium.

Equality has never been a value for many of the people who make up Trump’s core base: nativists, tribalists, bigots, Christian fundamentalists, white supremacists, xenophobes and all others who are too ignorant, insecure and narrow-minded to accept diversity. His energizing of these people, his permission for them to give in to their worst instincts is dangerous and frightening. And energizing the rabble to get them to attack “the other” is the stuff that fascism and dictatorial rule are made of.

More terrifying still, however, is not Trump himself, but the GOP’s tolerance of him. The party of Lincoln and Eisenhower has been converted into the party of Trump and it is the Republican Party, in its vast majority, that is providing Trump with the power he needs to become a clear and present danger to democracy or the rule of law. The fact that only a tiny handful of Republican politicians were willing to come out this week and condemn racism and Trump’s use of it as a rallying cry is a clear indicator of the extent to which the current occupant of the White House has usurped the GOP and imbued it with his one-man authoritarian quest for unbridled power.

That racist, bigoted poison with which the 45^th president of the US has been rallying his base has spread, obviously, beyond the stage of cutting off the hand to save the body when nearly no one in his party is willing to stand up and say, loudly and unequivocally, that racism is wrong and un-American, and that it won’t be tolerated. Not by anyone, including the president.

The Handmaid's Tale...the new normal?

We Americans tend to think that once historic social conquests like those won in the civil rights era are in place, they become self-maintaining and permanent fixtures. Trump and the hijacked GOP have demonstrated that we can take nothing for granted, that the threat of authoritarianism and a return to hatred of “the other” are only latent as long as the worst that the nation has to offer isn’t marshaled behind a would-be tyrant with the means necessary to inflame a following.

It is no coincidence that the TV miniseries of The Handmaid’s Tale, based on a book that Margaret Atwood wrote back in the mid-1980s, is so wildly popular among liberal democratic audiences today. It’s because, back then, Atwood’s premise was a prescient invention, while today, it’s becoming a burgeoning reality.

Sonia Sotomayor: Does White Make Right?

• Caption: Judge Sonia Sotomayor. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza).

US Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama has just had a lightning-bolt revelation. Namely, that President Barack Obama’s candidate for the Supreme Court, Federal Judge Sonia Sotomayor, is “out of the mainstream”...

I’ll wait a moment for the applause to die down before I go on.

You kind of have to figure that if Senator Sessions is just now noticing this about the New York-born Hispanic judge he either wasn’t listening before or he is just hopelessly obtuse. Well, of course, then there’s the other possibility: that he’s just now bringing it up and saying it on a nationwide news broadcast because he is still hoping against hope to hurt the 55-year-old jurist in the her confirmation hearings that started today, July 13.

One of Judge Sotomayor’s most avid defenders in the Senate, Democrat Patrick Leahy, has sought to show that the scare tactics the Republican opponents to the nomination are using are clearly unwarranted. The Associated Press has quoted him as stating that "…in truth, we do not have to speculate about what kind of a justice she will be because we have seen the kind of judge she has been. She is a judge in which all Americans can have confidence. She has been a judge for all Americans and will be a justice for all Americans…"

Leahy was talking about Sotomayor’s 17-year career as a Federal Judge, an achievement in itself considering that when she rose to the Federal bench she was approximately a decade and a half younger than most jurists are who receive that honor. Leahy stated that her record in the Federal Courts proved that she was “mainstream”.

Senator Leahy is also missing the point, however. Sonia Sotomayor is not mainstream. Not by a long shot. If her nomination makes it through the Senate hearings, she will be only the third woman ever to reach that august post, following the appointment of Sandra Day O’Connor in 1981 and that of Ruth Bader Ginsburg (currently serving) in 1993. She will also be the first Hispanic ever to sit on the Supreme Court bench and only its third minority member in history, sharing this well-deserved honor with Thurgood Marshall (first African American, appointed in 1967) and Clarence Thomas (the only serving black Justice, appointed in 1991). But apart from these obvious differences between Judge Sotomayor and other select jurists who have acceded to the highest court in the land, there is her own personal style to be considered. Sotomayor’s absolutely stunning honesty and audacious directness are what have gotten her into trouble with traditional white male conservative opponents. They question her statements regarding her Latin-ness, about the ability of a “wise Latina” to perhaps make clearer-cut decisions than some white males. And they have strived to connect her straightforward way of talking with her court’s decisions that they have attempted to brand as unfair, when, in fact, if they have erred at all, they have done so on the side of justice for all.

The fact is that what opponents are seeking to pass off as “weaknesses” in the argument for her appointment to the Supreme Court are really among Sonia Sotomayor’s strengths. Saying what the public wants to hear and making judgments according to popular belief rather than being true to oneself and one’s values and making decisions based on sound legal and ethical analysis is not what a Supreme Court justice should be known for, nor should running with the pack.

That Judge Sotomayor is capable of seeing the world from an angle other than that of the head-on mainstream should, in fact, be considered a welcome addition to the Justice system in the United States. Clearly, as a human being, no judge, no matter how lofty a position he or she attains, can see cases without doing so through the filter of their own upbringing, education and ethnic background. While it is their duty to be objective, it is their burden but also their virtue to be able to apply what they know about themselves and their own lives to the decisions they make and the opinions they give. And one would like to think that they are appointed, among other reasons, precisely because of their personal virtues.

The arguments that have been presented against Judge Sotomayor’s appointment to the Supreme Court, while dressed up in the guise of judicial issues, have been clearly racist and sexist in their underlying tone. Many mainstream, white, conservative Americans would probably like to continue to think of the Supreme Court as nine gray-headed, grumpy old white men, there to preserve and defend to the death the white Anglo-Saxon Puritan heritage that they would like to perceive as the “real heart and soul” of America. And these people tend to find Sotomayor downright “uppity”. But the truth is that the United States is an immigrant melting pot and that it has been this highly creative life-force that has been responsible for a large proportion of the country’s development and strength, its amazing diversity and its incredible adaptability. Never has this been truer than today, when in just a few short decades, the Hispanic population of the United States has gone from a scant 9 million to more than 45 million today, with projections for as many as 100 million US Hispanics to be living in the country by 2050.

Presuming that Judge Sotomayor should have to “answer for” her ethnicity and gender as an Hispanic woman is unquestionably gender and race-driven. For her opponents to try and pretend that race only enters into the issue in as much as Sonia Sotomayor is viewed as a “racist Latina” is truly hypocritical. Would they permit themselves to be questioned regarding their pride at being of “traditional” white origin or as a result of their making decisions that reflect their own ethnic background? And if not, does their “whiteness” somehow place them in the permanent position of inquisitor rather than respondent?

Fortunately, her approval appears almost assured even if it is highly improbable that she will win the approval rating of her white women predecessors, Sandra Day O’Connor, who received a Senate approval vote of 99 to 0, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg who was sworn in after a vote of 96 to 3. In the end, however, the outcome of the vote matters little, as long as it is positive, thus permitting the United States to enjoy the advantage of having a brilliant jurist with a fresh take on major issues sitting on its highest Court.