Our Democratic Republic under attack

As the legal noose tightens around the president and his cohorts, it seems like a good moment to remember some recent history.

Our precious democracy was (and by all accounts, continues to be) attacked by hostile powers. Especially of concern, is our voting system (one of the foundations of free and fair elections in a democratic republic). At least one of the hostile powers was an external agent called Russia. The other hostile power was the Republican Party. Through a well-thought-out and concerted effort to inhibit voting by persons they believed to be opposed to their agenda, Republicans became an internal threat to our democracy.

One needs only to observe the public reports of their behavior before, during, and after the recent elections. Under the guise of protecting us from voter fraud (supposedly undocumented alien residents purposely voting illegally by their milliions) Republicans brazenly attempted (and arguably succeeded) to tilt the elections in their favor. They used gerrymandering and every form of voter suppression they could bring to bear. The only reasonable inference one could draw is, these people were convinced they could not win on their ideas and were willing to employ any tactic ( no matter how unfair, unconstitutional, or mean-spirited) to insure their victory. The fact that they were funded by hugely wealthy autocrats also contributed to the travesty.

Were that not a sufficiently horrifying set of circumstances, these hostile powers (both internal and external) appear to be shameless and persistent in their Machiavellian efforts to undo centuries of effort to create a more perfect union.

You've reached "Narcissists-R-Us", how can you help me.

Setting aside for a moment what the "Left" says about the election, I suggest the following.

The people who voted Republican for President have no idea what they've done, nor how it is likely to swing back around and bite them as well as everyone else.

I know there are many very concerned people right now and I do not wish to fan the flames of hysteria. However, in my considered opinion, the inmates taking over the asylum is no longer just a metaphor. Further, if you are not frightened- you simply do not yet understand the consequences of this election. Conversely, if you are frightened to the point of immobility, you need to snap out of it. We are all likely to need clear heads if we hope to come out the other side of this heinous fiasco.

The above thoughts are mine.

JF

From this point down is ostensibly a letter written by an attorney to the liberal Daily Kos site. I found it online and unsigned so I can not vouch for the authenticity. I can say the writer makes a fair amount of sense to me:

I’m a business and corporate attorney in the Midwest, in practice for 32 years.  Today a client emailed me, asking me what I thought of the election.  Here’s what I wrote back:

Ok, I normally don’t discuss politics with clients, but since you asked:   Trump is the most appallingly unprepared, unqualified person ever “elected” (he didn’t win the popular vote) to the presidency.

He is dishonest to the core, an ignorant, vulgar, bigoted megalomaniac.  He is an authoritarian with a taste for revenge, who has nothing but contempt for democracy, the Constitution, and the rule of law – subjects he knows nothing about in any case.  He neither knows nor cares about science.  He will put criminals and crackpots in charge of government agencies. The Supreme Court will be packed with right-wing ideologues who will ensure that all manner of fringe legal theories will become legally enforceable.  Trump’s presidency will make the Bush nightmare look like America’s halcyon days. 

Russia – aided by an astonishingly unprofessional FBI director James Comey --  succeeded in swaying just enough votes to swing the election. Yesterday the Russian Foreign Ministry actually confirmed that Russia had worked with the Trump campaign to help get him elected.  For months the Trump campaign had vigorously denied this even after it had to fire campaign manager Paul Manafort after his ties with Putin and pro-Putin Ukrainians were discovered.  Russia also officially confirmed that it was indeed behind the hacked Democratic Party servers and the leaking of emails to try to change the talking points by creating controversy about Clinton while suppressing anything negative about Trump.  Imagine if something like that had surfaced regarding Obama or Clinton during their campaigns – the right wing would have gone apoplectic – but now all we hear is crickets.  The Russians have cultivated Trump for years; they know he can be manipulated to allow them to gain the upper hand in whatever areas they wish. Trump is, as the Russian saying goes, Putin’s “useful idiot”:   Полезный дурак Путина. 

I have a number of clients who also wanted to discuss politics with me this past couple of days, and who are elated that Trump won.  Their reasons seem to be: 

• They think our country is being overrun by Muslims or will be, and they want to avoid a situation like in Europe.  That’s a legitimate concern, since non-Europeans are indeed pouring into Europe and refusing to assimilate.  I have traveled and lived in Europe and have seen it with my own eyes. It threatens to destroy the fabric of society there. But we don’t have that problem:  One reason is that we control immigration.  We let in the best and brightest, and a tiny trickle of refugees, and that’s about it.  In Europe, by contrast, uneducated people from countries that never advanced beyond the 13th century can just take the train or drive and sneak in.  Also, non-Europeans flood into Europe from former French, etc. colonies such as Tunisia – a problem we don’t have.  Immigrant Muslims here in the States are assimilating far more than in Europe, in part because we don’t relegate Muslims to ghettos; we welcome them into our neighborhoods.  We have two first-generation Muslim families on our street. The wife in one of them wears a headscarf, but otherwise they’re not much different than anyone else. Our kids play together.  We get together socially.
• They hate Obamacare because it is killing small businesses.  Obamacare is a classic example of that saying, “a camel is a horse designed by a committee.”  It leaves a lot to be desired but it is far better than nothing.  As I’m sure you know, it’s just Romneycare on a national scale -- a Republican plan designed to privatize health care by delivering 20 million new customers to insurance companies.  It works fairly well in Massachusetts.  But once the Democrats abandoned Medicare for all and instead passed Obamacare as the price for getting Joe Lieberman’s crucial vote, Republicans did everything possible to sabotage and obstruct it, just as they have sabotaged and obstructed everything Obama has tried to do from day one.  The result is that the costs for small business are higher than they would have been – even though Obamacare has already resulted in a huge reduction in overall health care costs:  $2.6 trillion savings over the first 5 years.  For the life of me, I can’t understand why Congress doesn’t just enact Medicare for all – it would be financed by payroll tax deductions and small businesses wouldn’t have to contribute a dime.  And the result would be even greater overall savings.
• They think Clinton is a “liar” and “corrupt,” but all they know is the propaganda they have been fed for decades by right-wing hate media. They think her speaking fees make her corrupt but couldn’t care less about the fact that Trump stiffed thousands of people who sold him goods and services.  They think she is a liar because she mischaracterized something James Comey said (which he shouldn’t have discussed in the first place), but overlook the daily deluge of lies coming out of Trump’s mouth.  I have followed the Clintons and the right-wing vendetta against them ever since I was in law school 33 years ago. Hate media (Fox, Rush, Savage, Jones, Drudge, Breitbart, Falwell Jr. et al.) use exactly the same propaganda techniques used by Goebbels in the 1930s and by Radio Moscow in the 1970s-1990s, only slicker.  And people eat it up.  In fact, these past few months it was hard to tell the difference between the Russian state-controlled media and Fox News.  Both sounded just like the old communist Radio Moscow, using their usual propaganda techniques, but this time to shamelessly promote Trump and just as shamelessly denigrate Clinton. In reality, Hillary Clinton has dedicated her life to public service, to the betterment of the country.  She is comprehensively knowledgeable about public policy and the world (an in particular is under no illusions about Russia), and knows how to get things done in a bipartisan manner.  She is as honest as any politician can be.  I’ve had a top secret clearance and worked in intelligence, and the email circus was just that.
• There is definitely a racial and misogynist component.  One client, who laughed that Clinton got “spanked” and said he and all his friends talk like Trump all the time, and see nothing wrong with it.  Over the past eight years I’ve heard a lot of vile, disgusting racial stuff about Obama and Michelle Obama.  We aren’t nearly as civilized as I had hoped.

The world order is fragile.  Democracy is fragile.  The Trump presidency will be an unmitigated disaster. Our country and the world are in more danger now than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis.  For me as an attorney, I feel as though my country has just died.  White supremacy has emerged again. Vast numbers of uneducated white men have gleefully voted with their middle finger.  Every great nation has its rise and its decline.  Trump’s election may well mark the beginning of the decline of the United States as a great nation.

The tool is democracy

in response to this article: 

http://www.livescience.com/18706-people-smart-democracy.html

1- As we advance in our ability to ask better questions and expect, through technology, to receive reliable answers in the neurosciences our assumptions about ourselves are going to evermore butt up against new found realities. Much of what we find will be anti-intuitive and/or unflattering. I don't find this surprising. It would seem to me that a hopeful rosy assessment of ones self (despite obvious or subtle evidence to the contrary) is likely built-in to our psyche. This would make sense from an evolutionary standpoint as self confidence would be a component of generalized success.

2- The answers that we are beginning to find will cause us re-evaluate our historical choices and responses to various situations including those in the political arena. Barring an apocalyptic collapse, we will face an increasingly complex and globally interrelated society in which we can expect heightened pressure to make advantageous, rational, evidence based decisions. This will be difficult enough under the best conditions and we can presume that we will not be operating under the best conditions. One of those conditions is that even the most intelligent and rational humans (upon whom we depend for answers) themselves depend upon a brain design evolved over millions of years to live in a simpler and more brutal environment.

3- It is clear to those who work in the neurosciences or read about this work, that humans are not what we imagined ourselves to be. This is problematic in that we have, in large measure, arranged our societies and institutions based on our "hopeful rosy assessments" of ourselves.

4- I would suggest that even the best and brightest among us do not possess enough evidence to fully advise us. However, I can say with some confidence that direct Democracy was not favored by the framers of the Constitution. Illustrative of the foresight displayed in that document is the fact that centuries later our current scientific evidence is largely coinciding with their thoughtful intuitions.