EXPLAINING TRUMP'S ELECTION (IF IT HAPPENS)

 “The most important election of our times”—how many times have we heard that phrase every four years?  But this election, the phrase applies because, in no previous election for a century-and-a-half, has the issue of the survival of democracy arisen. 

As I write this blog less than a week before Election Day, the race between Democratic Vice-President Kamala Harris (and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz) and Republican former president Donald Trump (and Ohio Senator James “JD” Vance) appears to be very close in both the popular vote and the Electoral College vote.  (I still stand by my prediction of a “Blue Wave,” a November surprise, but I admit that it looks shaky.)  Once Harris replaced President Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket, the expectation was that she would dramatically improve Democratic chances of winning the presidency.  After the debate between Harris and Trump established her strengths and his weaknesses as a candidate, the expectation was that she would pull well ahead of him.  For Harris and Walz are not only strongly supported by their party, but also winning some support from the Republican party.  Indeed, former elected officials like Liz Cheney and her father Dick Cheney; senior flag officers, including those who have worked with Trump; and former White House personnel have vigorously criticized his fitness for office.  Nevertheless, at best, she has pulled even with him; neither candidate has achieved a lead in the national polls greater than the margin or error, and the same is true in the seven “swing states.”

 

Throughout the campaign, Harris has been cogent, compelling, and compassionate in her appeals to all Americans; Trump has been confused, erratic, insulting, and hateful in his appeals to his base of Christian nationalists, Catholic and evangelical fundamentalists, and other MAGA followers.  She has acted with civility and decency; he has defied decorum and indulged vulgarity.  She has “stayed on message” about, among others, abortion rights, a thriving economy, reduced undocumented immigration and crime, and moderately progressive taxes, with an emphasis on opportunities for the middle class.  He has aired his grievances about voting fraud, the 2020 “stolen election,” and politically trumped up civil and criminal charges; wavered on abortion; babbled about climate change; and stressed racist claims of uncontrolled immigration and immigrant crime as part of his more general view of America in decline (as a “garbage can”).  They also differ greatly on policies about NATO, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Israel’s military operations in Gaza and Lebanon, health care, gun control, and climate change.  The candidates and their policies could hardly be more different.

 

The same is true of their attitudes toward the rule of law, constitutional government, the operations of government, the agencies and people who make government work.  Remarkably, although the president-elect, in taking the oath of office, must pledge to protect and preserve the Constitution, Trump has said that he may need to dispense with regulations, laws, and even the Constitution.  (Presumably, in view of a recent Roberts Supreme Court decision, dispensing with them might be “official acts.”)

 

Given such stark contrasts, the question is how a close election is possible.  Given the early expectations for Harris to surpass Trump, the question becomes what has restrained Harris and sustained Trump in the polls.  Since Harris is well qualified by education, experience, and personality, racial and gender bigotry must play a role in retarding her ascent.  Also geographical bigotry; San Francisco, where she worked, is a by-word for uninhibited and untraditional political policies.  Trump is the antithesis of a conventional political candidate.  He is ignorant and uncurious (“unserious,” as Harris has called him), dishonest, erratic, impulsive, narcissistic, uncouth, and charged with or guilty of many and diverse civil and criminal offenses.  Bottom line: Harris is handicapped despite her assets; Trump succeeds because of his liabilities.

 

I explain this “Trump paradox” as a function of the discontents prominent in populations conservative in politics or religion.  I address religious discontents first since it is more easily understood.  Certain religious conservatives—many, but not all, evangelical fundamentalists and Catholics—are inherently imperialistic; they want religion predominant in society.  Short of controlling influence, they are frustrated, angry, and disposed to set aside inconvenient considerations of manners, morals, or religious tenets to acquire it.  Trump has courted these religious conservatives, and his appointment of three Supreme Court justices who fulfilled their promise to overturn Roe v. Wade has secured their loyalty to him and support for his candidacy.

 

The political discontents are more varied.  Some express discontent with the economy, despite its robust performance since the end of covid.  Or with levels of immigration or crime, both of which have been in decline for many months.  Or with various social policies, many of which do not affect them personally: LGBTQ+ issues, abortion, and contraception, with inter-racial marriage on the back burner.  The disregard of the facts and the disparity between their lives as lived and these political positions point to the factor which I believe matters most in this election, namely, the resentment felt by Trump supporters who believe that elites—bi-coastal, college-educated, professional or academic—scorn them.  (A special subset is the “incels,” horny single men 18 to 35, who cannot get a date, get laid, and get control of women, to whom Trump has promised to be their “retribution,” which does nothing to get them a date, laid, or control.)  To the degree that these supporters believe themselves scorned by these elites, to that degree they resent and resist information and advice from them.  Static polls indicate that endorsements by authorities or celebrities in the entertainment, social, political, or military domains like Taylor Swift, Oprah Winfrey, Liz Cheyney, and John Kelly, among many others, have failed to move these voters to support Harris.  The ultimate in rejecting authority, whether it be of persons, norms, or facts, is Trump’s liabilities which defy them.  The irony of the “Trump paradox” is that this anti-authoritarianism is the basis of his support and his authoritarianism.

 

In fairness, anti-authoritarianism is as American pie.  After all, the American Revolution was a rebellion against monarchial authoritarianism.  Unfortunately, anti-authoritarianism persisted because the colonies did not enjoy a tradition of a long-established, long-respected government; it had to invent one—which is why American democracy is often regarded and referred to as an experiment.  Its new government, however noble its intentions, lacked the authority traditionally invested in government and giving it stability.  Its governing charter, the Constitution, emerged, not gradually, with popular acceptance evolving as it evolved over the years, but suddenly, with underlying concerns about mob rule—today’s term: populism—embedded in its restrictions on representative governance, and with that great rift-maker, slavery.  What it thought was a barrier against mob rule, the Electoral College, has turned out to be ineffective because the country’s expansion was in agrarian areas, with small, undereducated, and underserved populations with long-standing resentments against “Eastern” bankers and corporate magnates, the elites of their day.  Ironically and probably unknown to him, the New Yorker Trump embodies that widespread resentment, just how widespread to become manifest in the election results, especially if he wins the presidency, in a few days.  If he does but democracy has a second chance afterwards, those who believe in the experiment will have to adjust the Constitution to accommodate, eventually to eradicate, resentment of elites.

PROTESTING ISRAEL; PROTECTING JEWS

 A personal note: I find it difficult to address the current conflict in the Middle East because it is not only extraordinarily complex and apparently intractable, but also emotionally and morally fraught.  Although unaffiliated and unobservant, I am a Jew committed to Judaism as an ethical monotheism; to its ethical principles, moral values, and historical mission; and to the survival of the Jewish people.  But I am no Zionist.  I am a Jew who empathizes equally with Israelis and Palestinians, struggles to appreciate their perspectives and positions, and tries to judge, when judgment is called for, fairly.  I do not write “as a Jew”—a phrase used by many Jews which presumes that all other Jews agree with their views.  I make no such presumption.

 

*      *      *

 

The conflict in the Middle East has exacerbated strains in relationships between Israel and the United States, and between pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian factions in America.  Many believe that the United States and Jewish Americans are friends of Israel in its current conflicts with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.  These beliefs are overstated.  Despite or perhaps because of US diplomatic and military support, Israel is losing, if it has not already lost, its moral standing in the international community, and America is losing its moral standing with many Muslim Americans.  I suspect that some significant number of Jewish Americans regard Israel as a Jewish state only by virtue of its majority population of Jews, not by virtue of its adherence to Jewish standards of behavior.

 

If the United States were a friend of Israel, it would do the duty of a friend: rebuke Israel for its conduct of hostilities.  It would demand much of the Netanyahu government, which is disgracing the country and discomfiting most Jews everywhere.  It would invoke international law which requires an acceptable ratio of allowable number of civilian casualties and an allowable amount of other collateral damage to the value of a military objective.  It would insist that nothing can justify the disparity between the havoc wreaked in Gaza—over 42,000 deaths (28,000 civilian), many more wounded and orphaned, and the devastation of residential and commercial areas—and the results of an unprovoked and barbaric attack—about 1200 dead and 250 captured citizens.  No law of proportionality can justify a 23-to-1 ratio of civilian deaths alone or the displacement and suffering of nearly two million people to neutralize an enemy.

 

If it were true to itself in its belief in the rule of law in international affairs, it would no longer tolerate—it should never have tolerated, much less become complicit in—Israel’s deviance from international law.  It would stress Israel’s interest in maintaining or restoring its standing in the international community.  It would support UN resolutions demanding the return of Israeli-occupied land in the West Bank and the establishment of a Palestinian state.  It would remove the American embassy from Jerusalem and urge international control and operation of the city.  It would invoke Jewish principles and values in demanding that Israel comply with international norms of warfare and support humanitarian efforts to relieve civilian suffering in Gaza and Lebanon.  It would not enable Israel’s offensive operations by supplying offensive weaponry (though it would still provide defensive assistance on an as-needed basis).  It would implement diverse sanctions to help enforce those UN resolutions.

 

If it were respectful of Jewish Americans, it would recognize that Jewish American opinion about current hostilities is not monolithic, and repudiate the angry, irrational view that Jewish Americans are blameworthy because of the conflict and its casualties.  It would respect that many Jewish Americans, some prominent on college campuses, are appalled by and protest Israel’s military operations and Netanyahu and his government’s policies and practices.  It would acknowledge that some are not appalled and support those operations, and that those represented by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which wields enormous political power in Washington, D.C., are, nevertheless, a minority.  It would act in accordance, not with one or the other side of this divided Jewish American populace, but in America’s interest in promoting Israel’s best interests.  However, given this divide among Jewish Americans about what it best for Israel, it would be careful about the policies which it adopts and implements.

 

If it were thus respectful of Jewish Americans on both sides of the issue, with their different opinions about the conflict, it would not intervene in support of one side or the other.  It would protect the Constitutional rights of Jewish Americans to protest Israeli conduct in these conflicts.  It would protect the institutions of higher education which protect the protesters from federal coercion by Republican threats to their accreditation or federal funding.  It would shield colleges and universities from AIPAC and its Republican and Christian fundamentalist allies, with their political or antisemitic agendas, who wish to punish colleges or universities which permit anti-war, anti-Israel, or pro-Palestinian (but not antisemitic, anti-Islamic, or anti-Muslim) protests.  It would also ensure that AIPAC’s rights are protected from those who oppose its positions.

 

America should be respectful of Jewish Americans—no more and no less than of Americans with other religious commitments—, yet aware that being respectful of this particular minority presents many dicey issues at all levels of government.  Conceptual confusions and conflicting political positions add to the difficulties.  For example, the definition of antisemitism by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance has been widely criticized for including anti-Israel criticism.  Difficulties with the IHRA definition complicate an understanding of antisemitism and efforts to address it.

 

In their political actions, officials understand printed signs, shouted slogans, and social media messages with antisemitic words or images as antisemitic.  But, in their administrative actions, they often deny as antisemitic less obvious evidence of antisemitism.  Examples are decisions not to investigate complaints, investigations conducted perfunctorily, and investigative conclusions ignoring the evidence or avoiding explanations.

 

A local instance is the top-to-bottom dereliction of duty in response to a formal complaint involving antisemitism when an Animal Control Officer made five false allegations.  Three LCPD police chiefs and several ranking officers ignored a request for an explanation of the falsity of the allegations.  IA undertook no investigation of the complaint for six months.  The IA’s close-out report ignored the allegations in the complaint although its investigation found that they were unsupported.  A year later, the City Attorney even claimed that the allegations were true.  The LCPD refused to remove the notice of false allegations from its files.  While this complaint was active for five years, every member of City Council ignored it except to ensure its omission from review by the independent police auditor.  Indeed, one Councilor, after reviewing relevant documents, offered a sharp denial that they suggested antisemitism, without explanation.  City officials and LCPD officers who disregard due process, ignore bias-based policing in a case of antisemitism, and show themselves antisemitic are predisposed to comply with policies or practices which would constitute a potential threat to local minorities and protesters, and lead to violations of their civil rights.

 

For the commitments of the guardians of public order are suspect.  Police departments are staffed by many conservative-minded officers who share prevalent prejudices against minorities and who dislike liberal protesters.  They are riddled by officers prone to violence or tolerant of it by others in violating the rights of minorities and protesters; the “bad apples” spoil the barrel.  A change of leadership or political climate can affect their performance for the worse.  When such an incident involving the police occurs in Las Cruces, shocked protestations of innocence, that it does not represent “who we are,” by city officials and LCPD officers will be contradicted by those who know better.

ARE YOU A PERSON? AN AMERICAN CITIZEN? AN ENFRANCHISED VOTER?

    In its day, the Declaration of Independence was a unique document, the first political document whereby a subordinate political entity declared itself coordinate.  So says its first paragraph; its second paragraph states the principles justifying the rebellion:

 

    We hold these truths to be self-evident, [1] that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—[2] That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—[3] That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

 

These great words are the gist of the Declaration.  However, since its day, they have been patriotically revered but politically debated or disregarded.  Most but not all citizens have regarded them as the charter of basic American rights.  Those who supported slavery and fought for its survival, and those who have continued to support and fight for doctrines of supremacy and domination“racial, religious, or sexual“over others reject the extension of these rights to all and identify themselves as unAmerican citizens of the United States.  Yet these words have never had legal standing, and only a dozen years later, the drafters of the Constitution, many of whom had signed the Declaration, ignored its assertions about the equality of "all men” and their rights.

 

    Unrecognized is the Declaration’s implication that these rights extend beyond "all men,” propertied or white, to all adults regardless of their race, religion, or sex.  The portentous words which get little attention are the concluding ones of the second clause, "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”  These ten words make three important points.  One, the "powers” of government must be "just” according to its laws.  Two, those "powers” are derived from—that is, justified by—the "the consent of the governed.”  Three, those "governed” are those living under the laws of the land.  The clear implication is that the Declaration implies that "the governed” are all individuals, without distinction of any kind, living under those laws.  (This language seems to permit resident non-citizens, including immigrants, to "consent” or not.)  The converse is that government "powers” are unjust with the consent of only a minority of the governed.

 

    A problem with this franchise of consent-givers is the breadth of those "governed,” who would include minors, temporary residents, and visitors from other countries.  But the problem is not a significant one.  Criteria for defining these categories are relatively easily constructed to exclude them from the political process.  Other exclusions, given the principle of equality and the rights "unalienable,” are impossible to justify.

 

    Yet the drafters of the Constitution turned their back on the inclusive democracy which this third point makes.  They did not universalize "the governed,” define individuals as persons or citizens, or describe their political entitlements.  They assumed that voting would constitute the means of expressing "consent” but did not establish standards of eligibility or election procedures.

 

    Some of these deficiencies were left to the Fourteenth Amendment (1868), particularly Section 1, which reads:

 

    All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

 

In the context of this post-Civil War amendment, "persons” meant Black as well as White (but not "Red”) individuals, defined them by birth or naturalization was "citizens,” and declared that states may not curtail their "privileges or immunities.”  So far, so good.

 

    But not for long.  Section 2 muddles the concepts of person and citizen, and relies on a sexist understanding of both.  It reads:

 

    Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

 

It begins by "counting the whole number of persons,” including women but excluding untaxed Indians (i.e., those living on reservations).  It retreats by restricting the electorate to males, when it specifies the penalties for any state which denies "the right to vote…to any of the male inhabitants” of the state.  States could deny women the right to vote without penalty, yet they could grant women the right to vote, as Wyoming did in 1869.  This amendment made explicit what had been implicit from the beginning, that the federal government recognized women as persons (five fifths, not three fifths, like slaves) for some but not all purposes, usually as citizens, never voters.  Its muddle was its progress from "persons” to "male inhabitants” (who might not be citizens? who might be recent immigrants?) to "male citizens” who could vote.

 

    Even so, Section 2 is not without merit.  Its penalty for restricting the franchise suggests a possibility for dealing with the various (intended, attempted, or actualized) infringements of voting rights.  States which unreasonably restrict the franchise by imposing poll taxes, requiring literacy tests, improperly purging their voting rolls, imposing unwieldy administrative requirements or other undue burdens on voters, or arbitrarily restricting access to or use of voting equipment or facilities, among other means, without cause could be penalized under this section of the amendment.  However, I doubt that its penalty has been enforced.

 

    In this regard, the asymmetry between Republicans and Democrats is becoming increasingly pronounced.  Republicans are doing everything possible to restrict the franchise of voters likely to cast votes for Democrats (and to challenge the validity of the election).  Democrats are trying to resist current or proposed restrictions.  The different approaches to the extent of the franchise by exclusion or inclusion is a measure of allegiance to democracy, specifically, the commitment to the vote as the means to establish "the consent of the governed.”

 

    The point of analyzing this aspect of Constitutional history is to note the potential threat posed by an "originalist” argument that the Founders and some government officials after them did not encode a democratic franchise in the Constitution, and only decades later added amendments extending it.  Even so, the Fourteenth Amendment protects citizens only from state infringements, not federal ones, which were not then imagined as possibilities.  The same cannot be said of the Nineteenth Amendment“"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex”“, which extends the franchise to women.  Still, the Fourteenth and Nineteenth Amendments protect the rights of male and female citizens in a way which legislation or court decisions—Roe v. Wade is the obvious example—cannot.

    The specification of persons by race or sex leaves open the possibility of denying personhood or citizenship on the basis of religion.  A belief held by many Christians in their superiority as persons can be distorted into a diminishment or denial of the personhood of believers in other faiths, like Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindi, among others“distortions which can be used to circumscribe their citizenship and restrict their voting rights.  Indeed, it remains an open question implicitly answered by assumptions about who is a person as a first qualification for citizenship.  Fundamentalist Christians believe that a human zygote is a person entitled to the rights of citizenship“an assumption with obvious implications bearing on abortion and contraception.  Without legislation or, better, an amendment defining personhood, a Supreme Court decision is likely to make a basic decision which will ignore or defy the religious convictions of millions of Americans and violate the two First Amendment provisions on religion. 

YVETTE HERRELL: WILL SHE RUN FROM HER CONGRESSIONAL RECORD?

In case you missed it or want a refresher, I post here the link to this blog, first posted on 7 June 2024: https://firstimpressionssecondthoughts.blogspot.com/2024/06/yvette-herrell-will-she-run-from-her.html.

The materials which Herrell's campaign, the New Mexico Republican Party, and supporting PACs have distributed show that Herrell is avoiding her record and her current positions.  Instead, those materials offer vague promises, and use inflammatory language and distorted representations of Vasquez and his record.  They do not inform voters that Herrell supports restrictions on, if not the elimination, of abortion.  They do not inform voters that she was and, if re-elected, will again become a member of the Freedom Caucus, the obstructionist "conservative" faction in the House of Representatives.  She voted to overturn the 2020 election results because she believed that Trump won but was defeated by voting fraud of one kind or another in swing states.  If Trump wins, she will rubber-stamp his proposed nominees and legislation; if Harris wins, she will resist her proposed nominees and legislation.

WHAT IS IT LIKE TO BE A SUPPORTER OF TRUMP?

      I found myself wondering, not for the first time, what makes it possible for Trump supporters to think and feel as they do about this grotesque political anthropoid.  Which led me to re-read Thomas Nagel’s famous philosophical paper "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” (1974).  My training in linguistic philosophy a decade-and-a half earlier did not prepare me for this discussion, and the passage of time has not increased my ability to understand its arguments.  The gist of it seems to be that there is neither an objective nor a subjective way of understanding, much less experiencing, the experience of a bat.  (This conclusion means no more to philosophers than it means to others—that is, almost nothing; to them, it is the arguments establishing this conclusion which matter.) 

The experiential distance between man and bat is, of course, much greater than that between man and man.  Nevertheless, I have no first-hand way to explore, much less experience, the compound of thoughts and feelings which support the visceral bond of Trump supporters to this political animal.  Those thoughts and feelings differ in their nature and their intensity, from the extremists of the kind who attacked Congress, many dressed and acting as if in computer action games, to the moderates who have reflexively voted Republican or have doubts about Kamala Harris (and Tim Walz).

 

I puzzle about these matters because, as a former consultant and teacher, my work required me to understand and communicate with those whose thoughts and feelings were quite different from my own.  In today’s political environment, understanding and communicating are almost impossible or quite rare for two major reasons (I ignore the reluctance or refusal of most people to engage in political discussion "across the aisle”).

 

One reason is that some words used in political discourse, even when their dictionary definition is accepted, carry different emotive or moral values.  For example, the word "bigot.”  Some people regard the label as a badge of shame; some, with indifference; some, as a badge of honor.  If so, attaching labels of moral opprobrium to, say, white supremacists can have little or no constructive effect; they cannot be shamed into abandoning their allegiances or their convictions.  Other words are transmuted or transvalued; Republicans (not Democrats) are "real Americans,” insurrectionists are patriots, compromise is treachery, moderation is weakness, etc.

 

Another reason is the now-common quarrel about what the facts are or whether they are relevant to a political preference or policy.  There are now, apparently, not only facts, but also "alternative facts,” many of which constitute stories of conspiracies.  In the quotidian world of everyday living, the proliferation and acceptance of non-truths threatens not only rational discussion, but also and more importantly sensible decisions.

 

Trump and Vance campaign according to an anti-factual rhetorical doctrine: a lie really big no one will believe is rigged, so it will be believed.  Their campaign presents a fact-free, dystopian vision of an America in decline; their falsehoods pronounced on social media, at rallies, in friendly interviews, even in a presidential debate enter the informational mainstream.  For example, Trump has repeatedly bad-mouthed the American economy.  A Harris poll in late May for The Guardian reports that 56% of Americans thought the country was in a recession (it was not), 49% believed the stock market was down for the year (it was way up), and, 49% said unemployment was near a 50-year high (it was near a 50-year low).  Thus, 58% believe that mismanagement by the Biden administration had worsened the economy.

 

Most Americans’ eyes glaze over when they see macroeconomic numbers, but their ears perk up when they are told about someone’s bad news.  Even so, it is hard to believe that they accept racist Big Lies about immigrants raping (white) women, murdering (white) people, and eating (white) peoples’ pets.  For many of them live in or near cities and towns with immigrants; can stop, look, or listen; yet learn nothing of the sort.  So the question is why they believe such stuff as fear campaigns are made of when the real world of their quotidian experience refutes it.

 

Whatever the answer, clearly, Trump’s true believers do not acquire the facts and accept the truth about the economy or immigrants and just about anything, everything, else.  They are naïve or needy in accepting whatever Trump presents to them; insensitive or indifferent to his falsehoods, distortions, or contradictions; and incapable of critical thinking.  Bad at dealing with the realities of the outer world, they are worse at dealing with the realities of their inner world.  Their illusions about the outer world parallel the delusions of their inner world.  They are incapable of introspection because they lack the detachment to observe, examine, and understand their thoughts and feelings.  Without self-awareness, they are also without mental or emotional self-control; ignorance and impulse prevail.  Morality and ethics are transactional; they have no conscience.  Their propensity for bigotry, cruelty, and violence reflects their anger and resentment at their frustrations in education, in employment, or of aspirations to popularity, power, or prestige.  (A notable electoral cohort is socially inept and sexually frustrated young males known as incels, for involuntary celibate; for them, it is no longer a man’s world, so misogyny prevails.)

 

Of such people, the true believers in Trump, many might want to say that they are bat-shit crazy or their complicity in that man’s imponderable evil is itself imponderable.  I prefer a story, probably apocryphal, instead.  On a day in Auschwitz, one Jew came upon another deep in prayer.  The one asked the other what he was doing; the other answered that he was praying.  The one asked why he was praying; the other answered that he was offering thanks to God.  The one asked what he was thankful for; the other answered that he was thankful that God had not made him like them.

THE RULE OF LAW DOES NOT RULE IN LAS CRUCES

      In this campaign, more than in any other which I can recall over the past 76 years, the rule of law—not “law and order”—is a major, maybe the major, issue.  In considering the issue, I looked back to the earliest continuing law in the Western World, the Ten Commandments.  Notably, they fuse legal requirements and religious guidance, and are not merely associated with, but essential to, Judaism.  Thus, Jewish law has the inherent approval and inalienable support of religion.  So, too, Islam, its sibling; not, Christianity, its offspring, with its different relationship to law.

     Arguably, Christianity offers no legal (and little moral) guidance.  The argument would begin by noting Paul’s repudiation of Jewish law and Christian antipathy to that law ever since.  As a member of a discussion group of members of Peace Lutheran Church who read a book about reforming Christianity in the 21^st century, I observed that Christianity had no code of conduct as Judaism had, with its 613 laws.  That statement of fact prompted an angry response from two members who demanded to know why Jews needed so many laws; surely, the Ten Commandments were sufficient.  Silence for a moment.  So I replied that it was appropriate only for Jews to choose which and how many laws they want for themselves.  The objection to the number of laws likely unread suggests discomfort with submission to the rule of law.

The argument would continue by observing that Jesus’ various urgings—resist not evil, turn the cheek, love your enemy—are not injunctions, are vague, and are reactive in moral situations.  They lack specific directions for righteous living.  It would conclude by admitting the omission of anything about Christ’s mission or message from the Nicene or Apostles Creeds.  Indeed, some might argue that the fact that Christianity is largely devoid of moral content—some years ago, a chain bookstore carried a book entitled Christian Ethics, which consisted of blank pages—is what has given it international appeal; it has no moral requirements and makes no moral demands which might conflict with cultural norms in different societies.  For many, it is sufficient to be a Christian to do your own thing and have faith that Jesus forgives and loves you.

 

One might counter-argue with the example of Jesus’ life and his concern for the poor, the weak, the oppressed, and his indifference to ritualistic precision.  But his example is consistent with Judaism and not distinctively Christian.  Moreover, an example creates no obligation.  Observers might or might not follow his example as they see fit.

 

When Christians want to stress the law and the rule of law they fall back on the foundational laws of Judaism, the Ten Commandments, as the two good Lutherans in the discussion group did.  But the fallback position is rhetorical, not real.  Christians may want the Ten Commandments posted in school rooms for children, but they do not want priests or ministers to address, say, adultery, which about half of their congregations commit.  (We all know the good news/bad news joke about that one.)  In short, in itself, Christianity, unlike Judaism, gives little support to the law or the rule of law.  Render unto Caesar is about as close to support of secular law as Christianity gets.

 

Religion to encourage obedience to the law counters the general reluctance to obey the law, to accept it as a guide ruling one’s conduct.  Absent religion, obedience to the law is necessary for some degree of public safety and social cohesion.  The reason for reluctance in a free society is obvious; it means voluntarily submitting to an external, higher authority—an act requiring humility and self-discipline.  In an individualistic and anti-authoritarian culture like America’s, people do not readily submit to restraints on conduct.  Letting it all hang out is a high virtue; being judgmental, even about oneself (go easy on yourself), is disparaged.  The national motto seems to be “rules are made to be broken.”

 

Most of us as youths pleased ourselves with breaking expectations or the rules in the diverse ways of adolescent rebellion.  Most of us outgrew childish ways as the demands of adult social coexistence required a modicum of self-restraint.  In my day, we regarded as low-lifes those who did not act like adults—thus we expressed it—with manners, decency, and honesty.  Steve Bannon, Rudi Guiliani, and Elon Musk would not be allowed on the White House grounds except as tourists.

 

As the nation’s social fabric frays—it seems nearly in tatters these days—, we recognize that growing numbers of adults are turning away from rules of any kind and especially the rule of law to the rule of powerful people who are vulgar and violent.  So successful are they that their followers revert to delinquency and deification.  Some Republicans associate Donald Trump with the Christian godhead or believe that God saved him from assassination for His special purpose on earth.  Never mind the First Commandment that we shall have no other gods before Him.  In such perverse ways, Christian nationalism is a fraud perpetrated and perpetuated by predominantly white people who use the labels and paraphernalia of Christianity as tribal identifiers, not as signifiers of religious convictions or a moral commitment to the law and the rule of law.

 

What is true about the breakdown of the rule of law at the national level is equally true at the local level.  In many respects, that breakdown is less dramatic but no less corrosive and pernicious.  We already know about my complaints about a police force which made false allegations about code violations; about police chiefs, mayors, and councilors who ignored officer dishonesty, LCPD policy violations, and antisemitism; and about their silent, do-nothing response—no transparency or accountability—to these complaints over a period of 5 years.  In my case, nobody listened, or nobody answered.

 

In other cases, too.  Now we learn about the many complaints of people seeking and not receiving medical attention at Memorial Medical Center, complaints reflecting its likely violations of its legal obligations under its lease with the city, complaints ignored for years by the members of City Council.  Councilor Bencomo implied (Bulletin, 6 Sep) that the members of City Council are too small, too weak, too fearful to deal with serious problems.  Asked why these complaints are only now being addressed,

 

Bencomo said that the government had taken a “disempowered approach” to MMC.  “Truthfully, at one point it used to feel like, ‘what could city council really do about our very broken for-profit healthcare system?’  It all felt too big, and I thought that's what this conversation was about.  But by disempowering our governing body, we disempowered our community, and we disempowered patients’ voices,” Bencomo said.

 

Note her admission “It all felt too big.”  View her talk about “our very broken for-profit healthcare system” as a ploy to use a general problem to distract from a specific problem and a play for sympathy.  Interpret “disempowered approach” to mean a cowardly, problem-dodging approach.  Conclude that members of City Council do not think about the legal implications of issues which come before them.

 

The City government’s disregard of the law is one thing; its active violation of the law is another.  I have blogged that many, deliberate, and costly violations of the Inspection of Public Records Act had the support of the Law Office.  The City claims to process 1800 IPRA requests a year without complaint.  Because I doubt that my complaint was unique, I suspect that the City Clerk has violated IPRA in processing other complaints—violations unknown to or unchallenged by requesters.

 

I have also sketched out some violations not only of City Council’s ordinance creating the Public Safety Select Committee (now apparently inactive), but also of its multiple violations of the Open Meetings Act.  If, after I complete my review of the documents released under my IPRA request, I discover other violations, I shall report them and address the issues raised by City Council’s multi-year violation of the public’s right to know how the City’s government frequently operates in defiance of law.

 

Meanwhile, because City Council might have met in secret sessions and reached decisions by rolling quorums, the New Mexico Attorney General is investigating whether it violated OMA in the process of hiring the current City Manager.

 

At this point, it is fair to infer that City Council, at least in the past half dozen years or so, has operated in disregard of the law or in defiance of the rule of law when it suits its convenience.  It prefers secrecy, even if it involves law-breaking, to avoid the discomfort of addressing problems in public which might risk demonstrating its timidity, its weakness, and its incompetence.  If the City’s elected officials and its ranking officers have no respect for the law which governs the City and its citizens, I think that they deserve no respect in corrupting the rule of law.

DARING TO MAKE DARING ELECTION PREDICTIONS

 Predictions about the outcomes of political campaigns go for about a dime a dozen and are worth even less.  Most of them reflect the wish as the father of the thought.  Still, in a two-candidate competition, there is a fifty-fifty chance of being right.  What matters in judging predictions are the reasons for them.

My original prediction for the outcome of the 2024 election was made in early June, before Biden’s disastrous debate performance.  I told a few friends with an informed interest in politics that the election would see a “Blue wave” return Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to the White House; maintain, if not enlarge, the Democratic majority in the Senate; and turn the House Democratic with a sizable majority.  That prediction was particularly daring because, at the time, Biden was trailing Trump both nationally and locally in the battleground states, and many Democratic candidates for the Senate and House were struggling as well.  It is still daring, perhaps foolhardy, but I stick with it.

 

One reason for my apparently wishful and rash prediction was the closeness of the race at that time.  If President Biden, already showing the wear and tear of his age, a long political career, and over three years as president, was close to his rival, then he had significant support.  Much the same was true of the many close races at the state level for the Senate and the House.  Supporters would stay with Biden and other Democratic candidates, and a majority of independents and many Republicans would vote for the Democratic ticket out of disgust or exhaustion with Trump and his base.

 

Another reason was a belief that a dispirited party still holding its own against an aroused MAGA base would find something or someone to invigorate them with energy and enthusiasm.  I had little faith that Trump, an aging, malignant narcissist, would finally say or do something which would break through what even the mainstream media had normalized about him, and repel those not suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome (which I impute to his devotees, not his detractors).  I had some faith that Biden himself would finally be appreciated for his accomplishments and his character as the campaign made them better understood by the public.  I was wrong to think that Biden would begin this later effort in the first debate, but, then, I had no notion that his advisers would be so door-knob dumb in preparing Biden for debating Trump.

 

Well, that someone has come along and vindicated a theory of mine.  We all know the Peter Principle: the advancement of an individual above his or her level of competence.  (Local instances are most of the members of the Las Cruces City Council and ranking officials in the City administration.)  But the reverse of the Peter Principle is the person who is not well suited to the lower rungs of the ladder, but who by chance rises to the top and finds his or her abilities matched to circumstances.

 

Enter Kamala Harris.  She earned few plaudits for her work as Vice President.  She gave signs of improvement in the months before President Biden withdrew from the campaign, in areas in which she, better than anyone else in the White House, could work, like abortion-related issues.  But once liberated by her elevation as Biden’s replacement as the presidential candidate on the Democratic ticket, she has astonished the world.  Her intelligence, her eloquence, her energy, and her charm, once repressed, now released, have become evident to all.  Like many women of talent whose self-confidence has survived being put down or held back, she has ascended to her proper sphere as a leader.  (No one imagined Dan Quayle or Mike Pence, both Indiana natives, ascending to acknowledged leadership of the Republican Party.  No one can imagine J. D. Vance, GOP nominee for Vice President rising to the occasion.)  Democratic morale has revived, and Democratic chances to win the White House have risen ever since, and, with those rising chances, the chances of many Democratic Senators and Representatives.  I am happy to think her the agent to make my prediction come true.

 

Unquestionably, there will be difficulties.  Of the most highly contested states, the state of Georgia alone will disgrace itself by trying to disallow Democratic votes.  The others—North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona—may have some kerfuffles but none putting the will of the people in jeopardy.  My prediction—here goes another—is that vote for the Democratic ticket will be so large that the idea of large-scale fraud or manipulation will qualify believers to be pursued by those wielding butterfly nets and providing padded cells.  (Come to think of it, Trump would be well served by incarceration, not in prison, but in a hospital for the criminally insane.)

 

If there is any comfort in the off-chance of being wrong, it is that I shall have a lot of company in the misery of a Trump win.  Still, I shall make another prediction on the assumption that my other predictions come true.  Contrary to the belief that the defeat of Trump will not be the defeat of Trumpism, I believe that a “Blue wave” will cleanse the country of an organized political movement extending his vulgarity and violence except for scattered incidents.  First, no one—certainly not J. D. Vance—will prove capable of assuming the leadership of Trump’s cultish following.  Second, petty pretenders will fall to quarreling among themselves and demoralize the Base.  Third, and most important, most Americans have had enough of what Trump, represented by Project 2025, means for America.  I am surprised that the Democratic National Committee or the Harris/Walz campaign has not resurrected the slogan which Republicans used against Democrats in the 1946 election: “Had Enough?”  The answer is “yes,” a thousand times “yes.”  Not the best of reasons to vote for Harris, but good enough if the many other good reasons fail.

 

If my very limited daily experience tells me anything, it is that the support for Harris is greater than the polls reveal.  Many who mean to vote for Democrats seem frightened of violence from the Base.  Not I.  I have been alternately wearing two long-sleeved t-shirts.  One says, says “Harris for President”; the other, “Dudes for, like, Harris, man.”  People passing me at the supermarket say quietly—they do not want to be overheard—that they like my shirt; some commend me for being brave by declaring myself.  One of my neighbors will not post a Harris/Walz sign in her yard lest nearby Trump supporters berate her.  One is an ultra-patriot, formerly, back in the Vietnam Era, a pot-smoking, draft-dodger; currently, a more-American-than-thou MAGAloid displaying big flags and red, white, and blue bunting.  The threat of vulgarity and violence at the local level is likely widespread and suppresses outward expressions of Democratic sympathies.  No doubt, the final vote will come as a great surprise to them and lead to their tiresome charges of voter fraud.  But the country will leave the refuse which is Trump, his Base, and the remnants of the Republican Party behind, and move on and move forward.