Talking To Strangers

I love this short piece by Melissa Kirsch from yesterday's New York Times Morning newsletter which speaks to the idea of being open to the world around you, the transformative power of saying "yes"(this echoes her past article about saying yes to things that come your way, seen here) and being accepting. I try to do this in certain social settings ... it usually ends up being fun for everyone.

Public offering

By Melissa Kirsch

The Morning
May 2, 2026

I went to hear some live music by myself a couple of weeks ago. There were a handful of other people in the small performance space when I arrived, mostly in small groups. I was considering taking out my phone, a habit I try to resist when I’m unoccupied in public, when a man walked up to me and a person standing nearby and said something to the effect of, “We’re all here solo, so we should talk to one another.” I was surprised and charmed by his extroversion. I had assumed I’d have to mill about awkwardly until the show began, the tax one pays for going out alone. But this guy, whose name we quickly learned was Stefan, had treated the barroom as if it were a party he was hosting, or at least a party at which he was determined to not be bored. The three of us chatted as the place filled up, strangers with a common interest in a musician, which was enough of a connection to pleasantly fill a half-hour.

It has become very easy to avoid talking to strangers. Noise-canceling headphones, internet shopping, self-checkout lines and, when all else fails, our phones — taken out at a bar, a party, a concert — insulate us against humanity’s intrusion. It’s not all terrible: I recently made a doctor’s appointment via consultation with my medical practice’s “virtual assistant” and it was refreshingly frictionless. In a city, headphones are indispensable for boundary setting; they send a signal that one is not to be bothered. But when not interacting becomes the default, our social muscles atrophy.

“Far from random human inconveniences, strangers are actually one of the richest and most important resources we have,” the journalist David Sax wrote in a guest essay for Times Opinion a few years ago. “They connect us to the community, teach us empathy, build civility and are full of surprise and potentially wonder.”

“Full of surprise and potentially wonder”! Why would we spurn such marvels? “Well,” my antisocial alter ego counters, “strangers are also unpredictable, possibly uninterested in us and sometimes boring.” All true. Is this why I, a person who’s hardly shy, would hesitate to corral the awkward solo concert attendees into conversation? There’s always the risk of rejection, and the risk that I’d feel a responsibility to keep the conversation going even if the people I approached weren’t talkative, a social burden I’d regret. But I was so grateful to Stefan: What a gesture of generosity to extend himself, to relieve others of the awkwardness of standing alone in a space where others are socializing. I try to be this kind of person, the one who breaks the silence, the one who can extend herself, but I’m not always able to silence that alter ego.

I asked Stefan if he’s always “that guy,” the self-appointed social ringleader, the outgoing one who coaxes the wallflowers into the mix. “I’ve come to believe that people simply want fun and interesting things to happen to them,” he said. Why wouldn’t they be receptive to him?

Most of us are thinking about ourselves, about the potential embarrassment that would arise from making an overture to a stranger. Stefan’s thinking about other people, what they expect or desire from a night out, and he’s doing his part to make that a reality. “Engagement with strangers is at the core of our social contract,” Sax wrote in his guest essay. Contracts are agreements: I will do my part and you will do yours; it’s in both of our best interests. The social contract doesn’t explicitly say we have to give other people a good time (or, it might — I haven’t seen an official copy), but it does stipulate that we consider one another and the type of society we want to create.

Sometimes when I’m feeling alienated from the human race, or baffled by the actions of another, I remind myself that every single person wants to be loved. This isn’t a particularly rigorous thought about human psychology, but rather something that seems broadly true. It’s an easily accessed plot of common ground, a starting place for understanding motivations that seem inscrutable. This reminder doesn’t mean I have to love everyone, but it makes their decisions a bit more legible. If I add that everyone wants fun and interesting things to happen to them, me included, I might be more likely to start the conversation with strangers. If we all see it as our contractual duty to generate fun when the opportunity presents itself (and if we can overcome our shyness), then we significantly increase the odds that fun will ensue. And if others don’t hold up their end of the bargain? Then, as Stefan rationalizes, your attempt “gives you a good story to tell your friends.”

Link to original article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/02/briefing/public-offering.html

Just Say Yes!

This inspiring piece from journalist Melissa Kirsch appeared this weekend in The New York Times' The Morning newsletter. It speaks to an approach to life that can be uplifting. It recalls for me a tenet of improv acting from my theatre-training days and that is to always respond to anything coming at you with "Yes, and..."

Offer accepted

By Melissa Kirsch

This past week, true to my vow to continue engaging in summer activities until the equinox, I picked raspberries and flowers at a farm under the impossibly clear September sky. I was joined by my friend Aliza. I knew Aliza would be up for the outing because she operates on a policy that dictates if something is “on offer,” you should avail yourself of it. Of course, berry picking is not a hard sell. But I’ve been observing the way decision-making becomes simpler if you default to accepting what’s on offer: taking the slice of pie, staying out just a bit later, stopping at the strange little fair you happened to drive past. All tiny things one could easily decline, all things with potential for pleasure.

We spend a lot of time hemming and hawing, coming up with reasons we shouldn’t do things, even things that fall under the rubric of “Things We’d Probably Enjoy.” We decide not to try the dance class, afraid of looking foolish. We skip the picnic because we don’t know any of the people going. We consider the downsides and decide to stick with what’s familiar.

As much as I try to be a “yes person,” I have an unfortunate talent for turning opportunities into obligations. “It’s on offer” is such a gentle (and British) way of considering what’s available. I might decide I am, in fact, too tired or not interested in whatever’s on offer, but I’m examining the opportunity as an option, a gift, an offering — not viewing it as a problem.

“I think it’s a protection against regret, or too much judgment — often my go-to feelings,” Aliza said when I asked her about her position. She reminded me of a day this summer when we were wandering around a town we’d never been and came upon a run-down winery. A guy with a guitar was belting some off-key Jimmy Buffett covers on the patio. Should we stop and try some suspiciously inexpensive rosé? It was on offer! The wine was not great, but that wasn’t the point. By taking what was on offer, we took a departure. What could have been an otherwise unmemorable day was made indelible.

One should not, it seems worth noting, be doctrinaire about taking every single thing that’s on offer. Breadth of experience can come at the expense of depth, and what’s on offer could end up being expensive, or dangerous. I’m thinking of “take what’s on offer” as a default that can be overridden. It feels of a piece with a question I’ve taken to asking myself when I’m worried about something: “What if it all works out?” This is my attempt to shift my thinking from worst-case scenarios to best- or better-case ones. Being open to what’s on offer is similarly optimistic. This stand-up comedian could be terrible, this party could be boring, this offering could be one I will wish I’d refused. But it could also be great.

Link to original article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/06/briefing/offer-accepted.html

Why Your Vote Matters: "Against Nihilism: The Power of Government Policies" by David Leonhardt

Your vote matters. Because our government matters. And it can accomplish wonderful things. Yes, the personal is political and vice versa. This wonderful article from The New York Times' The Morning newsletter by David Leonhardt shows that leaders with a To Do List can actually make a difference in the lives of United States citizens.

"The Power of Government Policies: Against nihilism"

The New York Times
The Morning
October 17, 2024
By David Leonhardt

We live in a time of cynicism about what government can accomplish. Most Americans say they don’t have much trust in Washington, regardless of which party is in charge. Even when the federal government sets out to do something that Americans support, many wonder whether it can succeed.

In today’s newsletter, I want to connect four news stories from the past few years and argue that this cynicism has gone too far — that government can indeed accomplish what it promises. I recognize some readers will support the policies I describe, while others will oppose them. But that’s OK. I’m not trying to persuade you that these policies are good or bad.

The point instead is that the U.S. federal government remains a powerful force that can alter the course of American life. The country has the capacity to address its biggest problems. Whether it does is a different matter.

1. The Covid vaccine
The pandemic was so miserable and divisive that it can be easy to overlook the triumph of the federal government’s vaccine development. Before Covid, the creation of any new vaccine took years. But Operation Warp Speed — a public-private partnership that received $18 billion in federal funding — led to the discovery of a Covid vaccine within months. That speed likely saved millions of lives worldwide.

Yes, the pandemic was also a case study of government failure. Republican politicians (including Donald Trump, who deserves some credit for Warp Speed) refused to embrace the vaccines, leading to hesitancy that cost lives. And many Democratic-run school districts shut down for a year or longer, causing lasting damage to children.

All of this, though, was a reminder of the power of government, for good and ill.

2. Immigration
In the debate over immigration, you sometimes hear the suggestion that the U.S. is powerless to change migration flows. “Border Enforcement Won’t Solve the U.S. Migrant Crisis,” as a typical op-ed argued in 2022. One way or another, according to this argument, people will find ways to enter the U.S.

But that argument is mostly wrong, as the past four years show.

President Biden took office promising a more welcoming approach to immigration than any president in decades. Sure enough, immigration surged. During the first three years of Biden’s administration, annual net immigration (the number of people arriving, regardless of legal status, minus the number of immigrants leaving) averaged 2.4 million, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That’s about three times as high as during Trump’s presidency. It’s more than twice as high as under Barack Obama.

Late last year, Biden changed course. The administration first worked with Mexico to reduce migration flows and then tightened border policies, as my colleague Hamed Aleaziz has explained. Almost as quickly as immigration spiked in 2021, it has fallen in 2024:

A restrictive approach to border security won’t keep out everybody, but it makes a huge difference. Many experts believe that the ideal immigration system would involve both a more secure border and more legal pathways to entry. That combination is well within Congress’s power.

3. Economic policy
Biden’s economic record is obviously mixed. But he made a set of specific promises about using the federal government to rebuild infrastructure, reduce medical costs, promote clean energy and expand certain kinds of manufacturing. In each of these cases, it’s happening.

New semiconductor factories are being built in Arizona, Missouri, Texas and elsewhere. Roads and bridges are being rebuilt. The cost of insulin has plunged for many people. Clean energy production has increased.

Biden’s industrial policy has been a reminder of the vital role that the federal government has historically played in creating industries like aviation, biotechnology, fracking and the internet.

4. Taxes
As with immigration, you sometimes hear the claim that federal laws don’t much matter — and particularly that the wealthy can find ways to avoid any tax increases. That’s not correct.

After Obama raised taxes on wealthy Americans, they paid more in taxes. After Bill Clinton raised income taxes at the start of his presidency, the same thing happened. And after Clinton later cut capital-gains taxes, tax payments fell.

If Democrats control both the White House and Congress next year, they really will be able to increase taxes on the rich. And if Republicans sweep into power, they will cut taxes on the rich.

The bottom line: The fact that governments remain powerful forces even in a globalized, digitized economy doesn’t answer many of the hard questions about what policymakers should do, of course. But it at least offers an antidote to the nihilism that sometimes dominates political debates.

Link to original article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/17/briefing/taxes-immigration-economy.html

Don't Rush, You'll Hurt Yourself

I found this piece by Melissa Kirsch to be a nice reminder about pace of life and priorities. Thank you for the wisdom, Melissa!

Hurry up and wait

The New York Times | The Morning
March 2, 2024
by Melissa Kirsch

Racing to catch a subway train recently, I tripped on the stairs leading to the platform, steadying myself only barely by grabbing the arm of an unsuspecting and rightfully alarmed fellow passenger. I sustained no major damage — a scraped knee, a bruise on my thigh I’d discover a week later. These injuries were, I told myself in the aftermath, well deserved. I’d disregarded one of my precepts for personal happiness, the one that stipulates, “Most misery is caused by rushing.”

My fall was the most basic evidence of this, a frying-pan-over-the-head reminder that running late and reckless from one place to the next puts one at risk of a spill. But there was also all the incidental unhappiness I’d incurred and inflicted in the lead-up: I’d been rushing to get out of the house, which put me in a foul mood. I’d been impatient with everyone I encountered on the way to the subway, adding some measure of unpleasantness to their mornings.

We rush because we’re late. We also rush because we want to move quickly away from discomfort. We rush to come up with solutions to problems that would benefit from more sustained consideration. We rush into obligations or decisions or relationships because we want things settled.

Worrying is a kind of rushing: It’s uncomfortable to sit in a state of uncertainty, so we fast-forward the tape, accelerating our lives past the present moment into fearsome imagined scenarios.

A friend and I remind each other regularly of a radio news segment she heard years ago. The reporter concluded the story, about a mess of delays on the Long Island Rail Road, with the line, “These commuters are ready for this day to be over, once and for all.” Of course the message was the commuters wanted to get home and have dinner and go to bed already. But the finality of “once and for all” made it sound as though the commuters were so fed up that they wanted to end that day and all days. Or, as my friend wrote: “Certainly at one point the day will definitely be over once and for all for each of us. Is that what we’re rushing toward?”

This obsession with being done with things, of living life like an endless to-do list, is ridiculous. I find myself sometimes having a lovely time, out to dinner with friends, say, and I’ll notice an insistent hankering for the dinner to be over. Why? So I can get to the next thing, who cares what the next thing is, just keep going. Keep rushing, even through the good parts.

In Marie Howe’s poem “Hurry,” she describes running errands with a child in tow. “Hurry up honey, I say, hurry,” she urges, as the little one scampers to keep up. Then she wonders: “Where do I want her to hurry to? To her grave? / To mine? Where one day she might stand all grown?”

This is not novel advice, to stop and smell the roses, to be here now, to slow down. But it’s not easily heeded. Our culture, now as ever, rewards hustle. The Silicon Valley maxim “Done is better than perfect” can be constructive when applied to procrastination. But we bring it to bear on situations in which “done” is not necessarily a desirable goal.

Since my subway incident, I’ve been trying to notice when I’m rushing, physically and psychologically. “Where are you going?” I ask myself. “And why are you in such a hurry?” That pause helps put a little space between here and there, and might, with any luck, avert future misery.

Link to original article in the New York Times Morning Newsletter:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/02/briefing/why-we-cant-stop-rushing.html

This Solstice, Solace for the Darkness by Dennis Overbye

This Solstice, Solace for the Darkness

A rare conjunction of planets serves as a reminder that there is more to the universe than just ourselves.

by Dennis Overbye for The New York Times
Dec. 18, 2020

We have now arrived at the longest, darkest night of the longest, darkest year. And yet rarely have the heavens so proclaimed their glory.

In blithe disregard for the activities of the Electoral College and everything else that humans were engaged in, the sun and the moon last week lined up in a perfect cue-ball shot to produce a total solar eclipse. The moon’s shadow slid across Argentina and Chile, and the majestic but shy mandala known as the solar corona revealed itself to crowds who had braved rain and fog in anticipation of the sight.

Meanwhile, the Geminid meteor shower graced the Northern Hemisphere with celestial brush strokes of fire. And as always there is the brilliance of the winter Milky Way, starring Orion.

Now comes one of the grandest events of the sky: a planetary conjunction.

For the past year, Jupiter and Saturn have been dancing ever closer in the night sky. On the evening of Dec. 21, the very nadir of winter, they will be so close — one-tenth of one angular degree — that if your eyes are as bad as mine, they will appear as one blurry, bright planet. With a little optical aid you should be able to discern them as separate orbs, almost kissing, although Jupiter will be 450 million miles in front of the ringed Saturn.

Go out and look southwest in the hour after sunset. According to astronomers, the two planets have not appeared this close to each other in the sky since 1623 — but the sun’s glare then would have rendered them invisible. To find a conjunction that humans could see, you must skip all the way back to 1226, or ahead to March 15, 2080. You might wonder who will be around to witness that event.

Every 20 years, Jupiter and Saturn come into conjunction — appearing within a couple of degrees from each other, about the width of three full moons.

Such conjunctions of planets are fraught with psychic meaning to astrologers. And some astronomers have speculated that a conjunction involving Jupiter, Venus and the star Regulus in the years 2-3 B.C. might have inspired the stories of the star of Bethlehem

The universe is big enough that you can find almost any omen you want there. Yesterday more than 3,500 Americans died of Covid-19. As many may die today, and again tomorrow. And tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.

Two of the titles on The New York Times Book Review’s list of notable books in 2020 concerned the long-term fate of life and the cosmos: “Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe,” by Brian Greene, and “The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking),” by Katie Mack. Both paint the same basic picture, which is either dreary or inspiring, depending on your point of view and psychology.

In the grand scheme of things, the universe is young. It was born in an eruption of energy 13.8 billion years ago. Its future, as far as we know, is endless, but everything interesting that will ever happen is happening now. This is the era of light, stars and galaxies; of creatures crawling around on dust motes, constructing telescopes and other intellectual pyramids, driven at least in part by wonder at the surroundings.

But in a few billion years the sun will engulf and destroy us. If the universe doesn’t collapse in a Big Crunch and disappear, dark energy could blow what remains permanently beyond the event horizon. The universe will become too cold and dead even for thought, let alone life. None of us will be remembered.

Should we curse our fate, or be grateful we were here for the party?

Lately a barred owl has come to live in my Manhattan neighborhood. Nicknamed Barnard after the college a block away, it has become a local celebrity. I saw it most recently in an old knotted elm on the edge of Riverside Park, surrounded by admiring humans with smartphones and telephoto lenses. A flock of crows kept trying to chase it away. For me, Barnard has become an omen, a harbinger of the essential generosity of nature in the low, slanting light of winter, a reminder that there is more going on in this world than just us. Even if the crows or the worsening weather causes Barnard to depart, I will feel blessed to have seen it.

On Dec. 3 astronomers from the European Gaia spacecraft, which has been mapping and measuring more than a billion stars in the Milky Way, released a video showing the projected motions of some 40,000 stars over the next 400,000 years. They looked like bugs swimming in a petri dish, twigs circling in the eddy of a stream, dust motes in a sunbeam.

Wherever those cosmic dust motes are headed, they will go regardless of whether we are here to watch, measure, map or wonder about them. Jupiter and Saturn will continue their dance; the sun and moon will play tag with each other’s shadows.

Odds are, whoever or whatever lives out there will never know that we were here at all, nor will we know them. But we know who we are. We know that we are alive now. We know whom we loved and whom we lost. Maybe that’s enough to ask of any universe. 

Saturn and Jupiter have been inching closer to each other all year and on December 21st, 2020,
will be close enough to appear as one. Photo: Ted S. Warren/Associated Press

Link to original article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/18/science/christmas-star-jupiter-saturn-conjunction.html

Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of Our Nation by John Lewis

Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of Our Nation

By John Lewis
Mr. Lewis, the civil rights leader who died on July 17, wrote this essay shortly before his death, to be published upon the day of his funeral.

July 30, 2020

While my time here has now come to an end, I want you to know that in the last days and hours of my life you inspired me. You filled me with hope about the next chapter of the great American story when you used your power to make a difference in our society. Millions of people motivated simply by human compassion laid down the burdens of division. Around the country and the world you set aside race, class, age, language and nationality to demand respect for human dignity.

That is why I had to visit Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, though I was admitted to the hospital the following day. I just had to see and feel it for myself that, after many years of silent witness, the truth is still marching on.

Emmett Till was my George Floyd. He was my Rayshard Brooks, Sandra Bland and Breonna Taylor. He was 14 when he was killed, and I was only 15 years old at the time. I will never ever forget the moment when it became so clear that he could easily have been me. In those days, fear constrained us like an imaginary prison, and troubling thoughts of potential brutality committed for no understandable reason were the bars.

Though I was surrounded by two loving parents, plenty of brothers, sisters and cousins, their love could not protect me from the unholy oppression waiting just outside that family circle. Unchecked, unrestrained violence and government-sanctioned terror had the power to turn a simple stroll to the store for some Skittles or an innocent morning jog down a lonesome country road into a nightmare. If we are to survive as one unified nation, we must discover what so readily takes root in our hearts that could rob Mother Emanuel Church in South Carolina of her brightest and best, shoot unwitting concertgoers in Las Vegas and choke to death the hopes and dreams of a gifted violinist like Elijah McClain.

Like so many young people today, I was searching for a way out, or some might say a way in, and then I heard the voice of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on an old radio. He was talking about the philosophy and discipline of nonviolence. He said we are all complicit when we tolerate injustice. He said it is not enough to say it will get better by and by. He said each of us has a moral obligation to stand up, speak up and speak out. When you see something that is not right, you must say something. You must do something. Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the Beloved Community, a nation and world society at peace with itself.

Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble. Voting and participating in the democratic process are key. The vote is the most powerful nonviolent change agent you have in a democratic society. You must use it because it is not guaranteed. You can lose it.

You must also study and learn the lessons of history because humanity has been involved in this soul-wrenching, existential struggle for a very long time. People on every continent have stood in your shoes, through decades and centuries before you. The truth does not change, and that is why the answers worked out long ago can help you find solutions to the challenges of our time. Continue to build union between movements stretching across the globe because we must put away our willingness to profit from the exploitation of others.

Though I may not be here with you, I urge you to answer the highest calling of your heart and stand up for what you truly believe. In my life I have done all I can to demonstrate that the way of peace, the way of love and nonviolence is the more excellent way. Now it is your turn to let freedom ring.

When historians pick up their pens to write the story of the 21st century, let them say that it was your generation who laid down the heavy burdens of hate at last and that peace finally triumphed over violence, aggression and war. So I say to you, walk with the wind, brothers and sisters, and let the spirit of peace and the power of everlasting love be your guide.

Link to original article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/30/opinion/john-lewis-civil-rights-america.html

American Catastrophe Through German Eyes

You know it's bad when the GERMANS are worried about Fascism in the United States. This is an article by Roger Cohen of The New York Times where he speaks about a recent article in the German magazine Der Spiegel in which the German people express concern at the rise of literal Fascism in the United States, a place where no one in the world expected such a thing to happen.

American Catastrophe Through German Eyes

Trump says he wants to protect law-abiding citizens. In 1933, Hitler issued his ‘Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State.’
By Roger Cohen
Opinion Columnist
July 24, 2020

PARIS — No people has found the American lurch toward authoritarianism under President Trump more alarming than the Germans. For postwar Germany, the United States was savior, protector and liberal democratic model. Now, Germans, in shock, speak of the “American catastrophe.”

A recent cover of the weekly magazine Der Spiegel portrays Trump in the Oval Office holding a lighted match, with a country ablaze visible through his window. The headline: “Der Feuerteufel,” or, literally, “the Fire Devil.”

Germans have a particular relationship to fire. The Reichstag fire of 1933 enabled Hitler and the Nazis to scrap the fragile Weimar democracy that had brought them to power. Hitler’s murderous fantasies could now become reality. War, Auschwitz and the German catastrophe followed.

I have known many thoughtful German diplomats over the years, including Michael Steiner, who labored to stop the Balkan wars of the 1990s, and Wolfgang Ischinger, the former German ambassador to the United States. It always seemed to me that their particular passion for freedom, democracy and openness stemmed from the knowledge of how easily these are lost.

Michael Steinberg, a professor of history at Brown University and the former president of the American Academy in Berlin, wrote to me this week:

“The American catastrophe seems to get worse every day, but the events in Portland have particularly alarmed me as a kind of strategic experiment for fascism. The playbook from the German fall of democracy in 1933 seems well in place, including rogue military factions, the destabilization of cities, etc.”

Steinberg continued, “The basic comparison involves racism as a political strategy: a racist imaginary of a pure homeland, with cities demonized as places of decadence.”

Trump provokes outrage in a cascade designed to blunt alarm. He deadens reactions through volume and repetition. But something about the recent use of unmarked cars and camouflage-clad federal agents without clear identifying insignia detaining protesters shattered any inclination to shrug.

From the deployment of those federal units in Portland, Oregon’s largest city, where protesters have been demanding racial justice and police accountability, it’s not a huge leap to the use of paramilitaries (like the German Freikorps in the 1920s) to buttress a “Law and Order” campaign. The Freikorps battled communists. Today, Trump claims to battle “anarchists,” “terrorists” and violent leftists. It’s the leitmotif of his quest for a second term.

Perhaps the years I spent covering Argentina in the 1980s, in the aftermath of the military junta, made me particularly sensitive to the use of unmarked cars — in the Argentine case, Ford Falcons — to grab left-wing political opponents off the street. They were “disappeared,” a word whose lingering psychological devastation I measured in countless tear-filled rooms. Later I went to Berlin, where there was only one story: totalitarian tragedy and the labors of democratic salvation.

The Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection confirmed this week that it has deployed officers from three paramilitary-style units to join the federal crackdown in Portland. The Trump administration, facing lawsuits, has cited post-9/11 legislation establishing the department to justify its action. Chicago is now among several cities being targeted as Trump seeks to foment confrontation.

As Tom Ridge, a Republican who was the first head of the Department of Homeland Security, noted in an interview with the Sirius XM host Michael Smerconish, the department was “not established to be the president’s personal militia.”

In wartime, the Third Geneva Convention, to which the United States is a party, requires even irregular forces to wear “a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance.” This is critical not only to protecting civilians but also to ensuring accountability for misconduct.

When paramilitary-style units have no identifying insignia, there is no transparency, no accountability — and that means impunity. Democracy dies. Think of all this as setting the scene for Trump’s own “state of emergency” if he does not like the November election result. Social media is combustible enough for a physical fire to be unnecessary.

The president says he wants to protect law-abiding citizens. In 1933, after the Reichstag burned, Hitler issued the “Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State” as his means to seize power.

German horror at Trump has many components. He’s the fear-mongering showman wielding nationalism, racism and violence as if the 20th century held no lessons. He’s the would-be destroyer of the multilateral institutions that brought European peace and made it possible for Germans to raise their bowed heads again. He is a fascist in the making.

As Ian Beacock argued recently in The New Republic, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, got it right on the virus. Not for her the imagery of war — all that talk of the silent, invisible enemy to be vanquished. No, for her the challenge of the virus has been a lesson in the power of democracy.

“We are not condemned to accept the spread of this virus as an inevitable fact of life,” she said. “We thrive not because we are forced to do something, but because we share knowledge and encourage active participation.” She went on to say that success largely depends “on each and every one of us.”

It worked. Merkel was addressing all democratic citizens, Americans included. No wonder Trump cannot stand her, a woman trained as a scientist whose life lesson has been the sacred value of freedom.

Link to original article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/24/opinion/trump-germany.html

And here is the Der Spiegel article Cohen references. It is a bit long, but please give it a read. This is a dire, dangerous situation that is hard to fathom. But we need to be aware.

A Perfect Storm
Democracy on the Defensive in Trump's America
Coronavirus, economic collapse and now mass demonstrations for racial equality: The United States is facing a trio of deep crises. Instead of offering leadership, President Donald Trump is exacerbating divisions and showing authoritarian tendencies. With the presidential election still several months away, the country's health is at stake.
By Guido Mingels, Roland Nelles, Ralf Neukirch, René Pfister und Marc Pitzke
05.06.2020, 19.26 Uhr

Once darkness had fallen, the general went to see the situation for himself. Mark Milley strode across the battlefield in olive-green camouflage and heavy boots, not to inspect a residential street in Fallujah or mountains in Afghanistan, but the streets of Washington, D.C.

A reporter asked Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, if he had a message for the American people. His response: "Just allow freedom to assemble, freedom of speech, that's perfectly fine, we support that," he said. "We took an oath of allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America to do that, and to protect everyone's rights and that's what we do."

It was a striking statement given that it came just a short time after security personnel, including members of the military police, deployed batons and flashbang grenades to forcibly push peaceful protesters out of the streets surrounding the White House. There are competing narratives as to whether they had been warned before force was deployed, but it is clear why they were moved: to provide a photo op for U.S. President Donald Trump.

Around 6 p.m. on Monday, after several days in which the White House had looked like a defensive fortress surrounded by a sea of furious demonstrators, Trump stepped outside. Up to that point, the president had hardly said a word about the largely peaceful protests or the limited rioting that had beset Washington, D.C., and dozens of other towns and cities across the nation. He was unable to find the courage or desire to give a consoling speech following the horrific slaying of George Floyd, a black man who was murdered by a white policeman who kneeled on his neck for almost nine minutes.

Once the crowds were cleared on Monday evening, Trump stood in front of St. John's Church, which had been damaged by fire the previous evening. He fiddled with a Bible, then held it aloft, as though unsure exactly what to do. When Trump was asked about his favorite verse in what he described as his "favorite book" last year, he had been unable to come up with one.

In front of the church, a journalist asked the president about his thoughts about the current situation. Trump muttered a few unintelligible comments into the wind. He was surrounded exclusively by white men and women, including Defense Secretary Mark Esper and the four-star General Milley, who had been tasked by the president a short time earlier with coordinating the military response to the unrest in the country.

Quick Pushback
The scene was as ridiculous as it was ominous, more reminiscent of South American potentates than of American democracy. Trump, who is fond of taking about "my generals" and also claimed to have the "support of the army," had arranged for a military escort for his foray into the streets of America. He also indicated that he wanted to send military units into American cities to confront the protesters, whom he has described as "terrorists."

The pushback came quickly. Defense Secretary Esper voiced his disapproval of the plan, as did several others. After Trump’s church appearance, retired General John Allen, who once commanded NATO troops in Afghanistan and was part of the fight against Islamic State, said, "The slide of the United States into illiberalism may well have begun on June 1, 2020." James Mattis, also a retired general and once Trump's defense secretary, wrote in The Atlantic that Trump was the first president who was seeking to divide the country rather than unite it. But Trump's political allies were still there for him. The New York Times published an op-ed by Republican Senator Tom Cotton headlined, "Send In the Military."

Trump and his political accessories are using the rhetoric of authoritarianism. Militarized police forces haven't just been using violence to quell plundering and rioting, they have also been attacking peaceful demonstrators. Journalists have been arrested as well.

Should we be worried about the United States? Is a fundamental shift taking place in a country that is synonymous with deeply rooted democracy? The current chaos on the streets of America isn't just the product of the country’s economic and societal tensions. The president himself has repeatedly exacerbated those conflicts with his rhetoric. Trump, it seems, needs the chaos. He feeds off it.

Few other democratically elected leaders have as much power as the U.S. president, a reality that can lead to abuse. Trump has made personal loyalty the most important qualification for those with whom he surrounds himself. He harbors deep admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin and once voiced his support for the violent crushing of the pro-democracy protests on Beijing's Tiananmen Square, saying it was a sign of strength.

The Russia investigation and his impeachment did not show him the limits of his power, and instead awakened in him a desire to hit back hard and to get rid of anyone within government who does not fulfill his every whim. In the waning months of his first term in office, just a few months before Election Day, he is increasingly putting his authoritarian tendencies on full display.

In the Hands of Loyal Acolytes
Not long ago, it seemed absurd to question the strength of America's system of checks and balances. U.S. democracy, more than 200 years old, has survived numerous crises and its resilience has always withstood attempts to grab power. But after more than three years of Trump, and despite him being the democratically elected president, the foundations of American democracy have grown brittle. Trump has continually pushed back the limits of what was considered acceptable under his predecessors. Flouting tradition, he placed the powerful Department of the Interior and the intelligence agencies in the hands of loyal acolytes.

"It's very frightening," says Rosa Brooks, a professor of law at Georgetown University. "I hope that I'm being much too paranoid but it's hard not to think of things like the Reichstag fire at this moment."

From the German perspective, of course, the comparison seems farfetched. In February, 1933, the National Socialists used the fire in Berlin’s Reichstag building as an excuse to issue the "Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State.” This essentially meant the suspension of the Weimar-era constitution and the beginning of the Nazi dictatorship.

The U.S. is far away from that. The system of checks and balances is a long way from being defanged and opposition is lively, as the streets in recent days have shown. In the House of Representatives, the Democrats have a solid majority and both Washington and New York are home to newspapers that wield tremendous power.

But the president is flirting with authoritarianism. And his party is following along.

On Monday, Trump retweeted a post by Cotton, the Republican senator, reading: "If local law enforcement is overwhelmed and needs backup, let's see how tough these Antifa terrorists are when they're facing off with the 101st Airborne Division."

On Monday night, military helicopters circled at low altitude above the streets of the capital to intimidate demonstrators and looters. In military jargon, the tactic is known as a "show of force," and tends to be used in foreign battlefields in places like Iraq or Afghanistan. Meanwhile, National Guard troops in battle equipment lined up in front of the Lincoln Memorial, their faces covered. And then, suddenly, a high fence was erected around the White House on Thursday. To protect the president from the American people.

Daniel Ziblatt, a professor of the science of government at Harvard, co-authored the book "How Democracies Die" two years ago. It quickly became a widely respected work about the rise of autocrats and the strategies they employ. "When we wrote the book, we wanted to avoid seeming too alarmist," Ziblatt says today. "Now, I think we were too optimistic. We thought the Republican Party would break with Trump when he began attacking the democratic system. But that hasn't happened."

Destructive Rioting and Curfews
The U.S. has been beset by a perfect storm. In absolute numbers, no other industrialized country has been hit as hard by the coronavirus pandemic as the United States, with more than 100,000 dead. The economic consequences of the virus have also been devastating: More than 40 million Americans have lost their jobs, a disaster second only to the Great Depression. And now, the killing of George Floyd has torn open the country's oldest wound: the deep-seated racism left behind by slavery.

During the initial weeks of the coronavirus crisis, many people took comfort in the notion that "we’re all in this together.” The phrase was repeated daily by news anchors, politicians and celebrities. But many black people in the United States saw it as an affront. They have been hit much harder than white Americans by unemployment - even George Floyd had lost his job as a bouncer at a restaurant in Minneapolis. Furthermore, the chance that a black American will die from COVID-19 is three times higher than for white people.

"Our country will thrive and prosper again," Trump said in his inaugural address in January 2017. But now, dozens of U.S. cities have seen destructive rioting, and curfews have been imposed on 60 million Americans.

Racist police violence has a long, ugly tradition in the United States and white terror existed long before Trump rose to power, but almost all presidents in recent history have tried to unite the country. When a white terrorist shot and killed nine black people during a Bible study on June 17, 2015, in Charleston, South Carolina, Barack Obama sang a moving rendition of "Amazing Grace" at the memorial service. It comforted the nation.

The contrast to Trump could hardly be greater. Last year, the current president awarded one of the country’s two highest civilian honors to the racist radio host Rush Limbaugh – a man who once said: "If any race of people should not have guilt about slavery, it's Caucasians." When the first disturbances began following the killing of George Floyd, Trump issued a warning that culminated in the sentence: "When the looting starts, the shooting starts." The sentence was used in the 1960s by racist politicians and police chiefs. Trump seemed to intentionally be throwing a match into a barrel of gasoline. And now, the country is burning.

"I am here to fight for my black skin," says a breathless Tranesha Smith, 25, in Oakland. She is holding up a homemade sign as a dark wall of police assembles in front of her. The sign reads "Peace for George Floyd" on the front and, on the back: "You killed my black brother." She says she is fighting for her children, for all black people. And for justice.

Understanding the Rage
"No justice, no peace," is one of the most frequently chanted slogans at the demonstrations. It is often followed by a second sentence: "No racist police!" Thousands have taken to the streets of Oakland in recent days, just as they have in dozens of other cities and towns around the country: in Minneapolis, New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, Washington, Houston, Portland, Louisville and Chicago. Windows have been broken in Oakland, which is located across the bay from San Francisco, and there has been looting.

But on this recent afternoon, the protests are peaceful, at least in physical terms. The anger is still there, expressed in slogans like "fuck the police!" which is chanted over and over again. The heavily armed officers, dressed in dark-colored riot gear, show no emotion under their helmets. Tranesha Smith, who works as an elder-care nurse, is wearing sandals, torn jeans and a colorful top.

Oakland is a good place to understand the rage of black people in America. Many African American people from the South moved to the so-called "Harlem of the West" in the middle of the 20th century. In the 1960s, it was the birthplace of the militant Black Panthers, who confronted the virulent police brutality of the time with violent force. Their logo can be seen these days on many of the T-shirts worn by demonstrators. Another popular motif is an image of Colin Kaepernick, the former quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers who popularized the practice of kneeling during the national anthem as a sign of protest. Oakland has a long tradition of black resistance.

And with good reason. Whereas black residents made up roughly half of the city's population in 1980, their share is below a quarter today. One reason for their displacement is the economic boom in Silicon Valley and the entire Bay Area, where high-salaried tech workers drove up housing prices, making it too expensive for many long-time residents to stay. Gentrification has long-since taken root in San Francisco, where black faces are frequently only seen among the homeless.

The geography of Oakland is itself evidence of structural racism: The neighborhoods where the city's black population tends to live are located in the lowlands and crisscrossed by highways raised on cement pillars. White residents tend to live higher up on the hillsides, with views of the bay.

As the demonstrators march past City Hall, they chant the names of the victims: "Say their names! George Floyd! Say their names! Breonna Taylor! Say their names! Ahmaud Arbery!"

Breonna Taylor was killed by police in Kentucky in March. Ahmaud Arbery was a young black man who was apparently shot and killed while jogging in Georgia by a white civilian. They are just three names in a long list of black victims. Many American cities have their own George Floyd.

"But this time, it's different," says Jackie Byers, 48, from a local human rights organization called Black Organizing Project, who is also marching with the demonstrators. It's different, Byers believes, than during the unrest in Ferguson in 2014, when Michael Brown was shot and killed. And different from the 1991 uprising in Los Angeles after police beat Rodney King half to death.

"A Stab in Our Hearts"
What’s new, says Byers, is that millions of Americans could see the expression on the face of the policeman Derek Chauvin as he presses his knee into the neck of George Floyd for eight minutes and 46 seconds. The video immediately went viral on the internet. The lack of emotion, the impassiveness, says Byers, "is like a stab in our hearts." It reflects, she says, the degree of arrogance of white law enforcement officers who don't have to fear ever having to face justice for their actions.

According to the Mapping Police Violence database, 99 percent of all deaths caused by police between 2013 and 2019 resulted in no charges whatsoever. Each year, around 1,000 people in the United States lose their lives at the hands of the police, though the likelihood of being one of those victims is almost three times higher for blacks than it is for whites.

Another new aspect, says Byers, is that there are now two life-threatening viruses fueling the rage of black Americans: racism, which is deeply rooted in American culture and history, and SARS-CoV-2, which has hit blacks much harder than whites. Together, they have created a social explosion.

The fact that a greater proportion of black Americans die from COVID-19 is also a consequence of the conditions in which they live. On average, black Americans are much poorer than white Americans, which frequently translates to worse health and inadequate access to quality medical care. The average income of a black household in the United States is around $40,000 per year. For white households, that number is $70,000. Black Americans are also relatively more exposed to the virus because they are more likely to work at lower paying jobs that they cannot perform from home – working in supermarkets, delivering packages or caring for patients in the hospitals.

Walking around the Chicago’s Austin neighborhood with Elce Redmond, one gets a sense of how American capitalism has treated black residents. A community organizer, Redmond has spent 30 years focusing his attentions on Austin, one of the city's poorest and most dangerous districts. Some 81 percent of its population are African-American, and 13 percent are Latino.

Broken Out or Boarded Up
Until the end of the 1980s, Redmond says, Austin was a solid, stable neighborhood. But then, spurred by globalization, numerous companies moved production overseas, plunging many people into unemployment and the neighborhood into a constant battle against poverty, drugs and crime. In some streets, nice homes with well-tended yards show that not everyone is losing the battle. But just one block away, entire rows of houses stand empty, with the windows either broken out or boarded up.

Children who grow up in Austin have a difficult start in life. "People used to think they had a chance if they worked hard and didn't give up," says Redmond. But that faith is waning. "The American dream doesn't work because there is a wall: institutional racism." To show what he means, Redmond points to a large building whose windows have been bricked up. It used to be Emmet Elementary School, but like many schools in Chicago's poorer neighborhoods, the school was closed down in 2014. "The only path to advancement is education," says Redmond. "There are plenty of dedicated teachers here, but there is a lack of financial means and there is a lack of desire to change things."

The American education system is heavily tilted toward the haves and away from the have nots. Schools in wealthy neighborhoods receive more public funding than those in poor neighborhoods because funding is dependent on local tax revenues. "Children who need help don't have a chance," Redmond says. And the many local initiatives in Austin can hardly change that situation. Now they are having to deal with the coronavirus as well. "This is a virus hotspot," says Redmond, a situation, he says, that came about in part because of high residential density and a lack of quality health care. The local hospital was shut down years ago.

The virus has combined with this widespread rage to feed the current unrest on American streets. The sentence George Floyd uttered as he was dying, "I can't breathe," has become the slogan of the nationwide demonstrations against police violence. But it also reflects the particularly hard impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the black population in the past several months.

Colin Kaepernick's kneel of protest has also taken on new meaning in recent days, mirrored as it is by the way the policeman knelt on George Floyd's neck. In many parts of the U.S., kneeling has become a way for the police to demonstrate solidarity with protesters. These scenes shouldn't be forgotten amid the news coverage of burning buildings, plundered shops and clouds of tear gas.

A Question of Power
America finds itself at a high-stakes crossroads. Although there has been looting and rage, hundreds of thousands of white Americans have joined the anti-racist protests. Indeed, the protests seem to also be aimed at the man in the Oval Office, whose administration does not include a single black person in a prominent cabinet position and whose campaign events are almost exclusively attended by white supporters.

Outside the White House, the United States is becoming increasingly diverse, making it increasingly difficult to win an election without support from black and Latino voters. The unrest is thus not just about racist police officers or jobs, but about who has the say in the United States, about power.

In 2016, Trump received 3 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton, who won 89 percent of the African-American vote. Trump only won because of the Electoral College, which grants the primarily white states in the Midwest influence far outstripping the size of their populations. Demographically, though, whites are shrinking as a share of the population.

In Texas, a Republic stronghold for decades, the non-white population has already overtaken the white population. "We are experiencing the death rattle of the America represented by Donald Trump," believes Eddie Glaude, an historian at Princeton University. "Politically, that leads to panicked efforts to hold onto an America that is dying out. It has been accelerated by COVID-19."

The Republicans have entered into a devil's bargain with Donald Trump. He delivered all that the party has ever pined for: tax cuts, conservative judges and sharp anti-abortion rhetoric. In return, the party has completely subordinated itself to Trump, whose re-election strategy hinges on the support of white voters without a college education. The strategy can only be successful if large portions of the electorate are kept away from the voting booth.

The Republican conception of free and fair elections was on full display in Wisconsin in early April, during a vote in which Democrats also chose their favored candidate for the presidency. Governor Tony Evers, a Democrat, wanted to delay the vote to give citizens an opportunity to vote by mail due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Endlessly Long Lines
But Republicans in the Wisconsin statehouse didn't just reject that effort, they ensured that the number of voting booths was drastically reduced – particularly in areas where many African Americans lived. In Milwaukee, 175 of 180 polling stations were closed. Those wanting to cast their ballots had to stand in endlessly long lines.

It was part of a long tradition. "There is no Republican majority in America, except on election days," wrote the New York Times in a recent editorial. Instead of striving to attract new groups of voters, the Republicans have adopted a different strategy: They are trying to prevent minorities from voting at all. And it is made easier by America's system of administration, which is not easy for Continental Europeans to understand.

Because American's do not carry federal IDs, citizens must register to vote. And every state decides on its own which document is required to do so. Since 2014, the state of Alabama has demanded a driver's license. Documents entitling holders to social housing are no longer sufficient, but for many African Americans, they are the only official documents that they possess.

The exclusion of black voters was an invention of the Democrats, once the party of Southern slave owners. After the end of the Civil War in 1865, they wanted to prevent former slaves from rising to positions of power. The Republicans, who have almost no black support today, expanded and modernized those efforts in the 20th century. "It used to be: If you vote, you die," says historian Carol Anderson, referencing the lynchings that used to take place in the South. "Today, intimidation works differently."

Crystal Mason is familiar with that intimidation. In the 2016 presidential elections, she wanted to cast her ballot for Hillary Clinton. Because her name was no longer the registration rolls, however, she cast a provisional ballot. It is a standard procedure and votes thus cast are examined after the election to determine if they are valid.

The mother of three had served a five-year jail sentence for a tax offense, but because she was on parole, she was ineligible to vote. By phone, she explains that she didn’t know about the rule, and received a shocking surprise a few months later: She was being charged with voter fraud. Mason was ultimately sentenced to ten more months in prison for violating her parole and sentenced to additional five years in jail for voter fraud. A court rejected her appeal. The three judges who ruled on her case had all been appointed by Republicans. "Prison for a vote cast in good faith that wasn’t counted – this is a textbook example of voter intimidation,” argues Anderson, the historian.

The Notion of American Exceptionalism
Another popular method Is to cleanse voter-registration rolls. The Republican-run state of Georgia stalled 53,000 people’s voter applications shortly before the state’s gubernatorial election in 2018. Because of alleged discrepancies within the registration system, these residents were made to meet confusing identification requirements in order to vote. Of those affected, 70 percent were black – hardly a coincidence. Ultimately, Republican Brian Kemp, a fervent admirer of Trump, won by approximately 55,000 votes.

It’s unclear if these kinds of tactics will help Trump win the election in November. The virus has shattered the strong economy he hoped would propel his election campaign. Millions of Americans have lost not only their jobs, but also their health insurance in recent weeks. The economic hardship in the U.S. is now so severe that many families no longer know how to feed their children. Miles-long queues have formed in front of food banks, and American downtowns are on fire.

Trump is trying to profit from the anger felt by many Americans about the looting, which has been especially serious in New York, Washington D.C. and Minneapolis, all of which are run by Democratic mayors. "I am your president of law and order,” Trump said in a White House address on Monday. But it is unclear if those kinds of appeals will actually help him.

The nation is watching footage on its screens of burnt-out police cars and shattered storefronts, of an America in chaos. In a recent CBS News survey, 49 percent of respondents said they were dissatisfied with Trump’s management of the crisis, compared to 32 percent who thought he was doing a "good job.”

American self-confidence has always been predicated on the belief that it is special. In his farewell address on January 11, 1989, Ronald Reagan spoke of a "shining city upon a hill,” admired not only for its prosperity but for its richness in ideas, its goodness and cosmopolitanism. Ten months later, the Iron Curtain fell, and it seemed like the age of American dominance was upon us.

This notion of American exceptionalism also came up in Trump’s inauguration speech in January of 2017, albeit in a vulgar form: "American will start winning again, winning like never before,” the president said. Three and a half years later, there are no signs of victory. The defeat in the war in Afghanistan, the longest in U.S. history, is now as good as certain. The war will soon have lasted 19 years and cost the lives of 2,400 U.S. soldiers and Trump is eager to withdraw from the country, though there is little doubt that the Taliban will take over in Kabul when he does, much like the Communists overran Saigon after the last GIs left Vietnam. China is seizing the opportunity provided by the crisis to impose itself on Hong Kong, and Trump is in danger of destroying the G-7 Summit, the last influential venue for discussion among the Western developed nations.

Capable of Anything
As a result, older voters in particular seem to increasingly be turning away from Trump and toward Biden and the Democrats. In a survey conducted by Morning Consult, a polling institute, 45 percent of those asked said they would vote for Joe Biden, Trump’s challenger, due to the protests. What’s particularly unsettling for Trump is that his challenger is currently ahead in the polls in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Biden now even has a chance of winning in erstwhile Republican strongholds like Arizona, Georgia and Texas. Polls predict a very close race in these states, something would have been unthinkable a few months ago.

Now a seemingly outrageous question is increasingly being asked: Would Trump accept defeat? "The next five months before the election could become very serious. Trump has the potential to significantly affect free and fair elections. He can undermine the entire electoral process and create maximum chaos,” says Bill Kristol, who was long one of the country's leading conservative voices. Kristol is known for bringing Sarah Palin, John McCain’s running mate in the 2012 presidential election, into the spotlight, and was the editor-in-chief of the Weekly Standard, a now-defunct conservative magazine once owned by Rupert Murdoch.

Kristol broke away from Trump early on, partly because he argues Trump is leading the Republican Party to disaster. He believes Trump is capable of anything in a fight for political survival. "He can fake a crisis, spread false information, for example, by simply claiming a week before the election that he discovered a conspiracy.”

A look back to February 2016 is instructive when it comes to Trump's view of democratic mores. At the time, he was only one of many candidates for the Republican nomination and he had just lost the first primary in Iowa to Texas Senator Ted Cruz. The voting was fair, but Trump still claimed he had been cheated. "Ted Cruz didn’t win Iowa, he stole it,” Trump wrote on Twitter. "Based on the fraud committed by Senator Ted Cruz during the Iowa caucus, either a new election should take place or Cruz results nullified.” Neither of those things happened.

Large-Scale Fraud
Back then, few took Trump's allegations seriously. Now, though, he’s in the White House, and many people he trusts occupy positions in the state apparatus. Briefings on the security of the presidential election, for example, are now being given by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, a Trump acolyte who has spread the abstruse theory that the scandal about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was in fact a conspiracy perpetrated by Barack Obama.

Rosa Brooks of Georgetown University argues that there can be no doubt that Trump is setting the stage for a refusal to accept a potential election defeat in November. Brooks has formed a working group for the Democrats that is tasked with preparing Biden’s campaign team for the worst-case scenario: a president planning a coup d’état. If Biden doesn’t win by a landslide, Trump will most likely claim victory, Brooks believes.

Trump has been saying for weeks that his opponents in the fall presidential election are preparing to carry out large-scale fraud. The Democrats believe it’s no coincidence that the president’s criticism is focused on postal voting, even though it makes no sense at first glance. A study by Stanford University published in mid-April concluded that neither Republicans nor Democrats would benefit from a U.S. vote carried out entirely by mail.

Around half the American electorate wants to vote by mail this fall, more than ever. This is mainly because of the coronavirus, which has led millions of Americans to want to avoid waiting in long lines for hours in front of their polling locations, as is common in the U.S. At the same time, Trump and congressional Republicans are refusing to provide additional money to ensure an orderly election process. "That's a recipe for distrust,” says Nathaniel Persily, who teaches at Stanford University Law School and specializes in American electoral law.

Trump already declared in 2016 that he won’t voluntarily concede defeat, and the chaotic electoral system in the U.S. gives him several opportunities to question a Biden victory. Over 10,000 different bodies are responsible for carrying out the presidential elections – cities, municipalities, counties – and the postal voting system is a patchwork quilt. In some states, like Texas, vote-by-mail is only permitted if the voter gives a valid reason. Other states have switched entirely to mail voting. There are also different deadlines and security standards. In some states, the signature on the envelope must match the signature given at the time of vote-by-mail registration, which opens the door to challenges to the validity of hundreds of thousands of postal votes.

Now Rosa Brooks and many other American lawyers are working through scenarios that, until recently, seemed unthinkable. What if, on election day, Republicans imposed a curfew on cities with traditionally large numbers of Democratic voters? What should be done if the outcome is close and the president refuses to recognize the result in a swing state like Pennsylvania? Given that it takes days to receive and count all postal votes, what should be done if Trump proclaims himself the winner before that happens?

Bringing the Peace Back
"We don't have some single entity that can validate" the outcome of the election, Brooks says. "It’s purely political.” The more the professor has looked into the subject, the more pessimistic she has become that a president can be stopped if he has no qualms about ignoring the will of the people. It’s not even clear that the Supreme Court would accept a suit against a president who refuses to vacate the White House. And even then, what if Trump simply disregards a Supreme Court ruling?

The Secret Service would have to escort the president out of the Oval Office. But the Secret Service reports to the Department of Homeland Security, Brooks says. "Their boss is the secretary of homeland security. His boss is Trump."

There have been several extremely close election results in the United States. In 1960, Richard Nixon lost to John F. Kennedy by less than 113,000 votes. In 2000, the race between George W. Bush and his Democratic rival, Al Gore, came down to only a few hundred votes in Florida. But in both cases, the country was spared a constitutional crisis by the fact that the defeated candidates ultimately conceded defeat. This kind of humility can hardly be expected from Trump.

"Trump is going to contest whatever happens if he loses,” Jacob Hacker, who teaches political science at Yale University, argues. The question would then be whether American society can force the president to back down. Trump may have the Republican Party and parts of the state apparatus under his control, but the protests that are happening daily across the country are increasingly turning towards the president.

This past Wednesday afternoon, hundreds of people, young and old, black and white, once again protested outside the White House. They were facing down police officers with helmets and truncheons. The crowd included Pat Rolich, 60, from Virginia. "Trump is escalating the situation, causing more and more violence. It almost feels like living in a police state,” he says. For him, it is clearer than ever that Trump is no longer tenable as a president. "We need someone who can bring peace back to our country.”

Link to original article in English:
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/a-perfect-storm-democracy-on-the-defensive-in-trump-s-america-a-00f31b18-b59e-4c45-a5f3-fde7c739d957

Meanwhile, back on Earth...

100,00 dead.
More than the Vietnam War plus the Korean War plus 9/11 plus every school shooting ever.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CAjxp4Anhj-/

Mayor Pete Flew Sky High by Frank Bruni

I am a little heartsick about Pete dropping out, but this wonderful article by Frank Bruni at the NY Times sums it all up.


Mayor Pete Flew Sky High
The youngest of the Democratic candidates did the grown-up thing, and dropped out.
By Frank Bruni
Opinion Columnist

To Pete Buttigieg’s many other virtues, add these: He’s not delusional, and he can see beyond himself.

He looked at what happened in South Carolina on Saturday. He looked at what was likely to happen in the many states that will vote on Tuesday. And he recognized that he had no path to the Democratic presidential nomination and that staying in the race would probably help Bernie Sanders, the rival he had branded a dangerous nominee.

So on Sunday he got out. Just like that. No praying for a miracle. No waiting too long. No protracted melodrama or slow-building drum roll of hints. No, the youngest of the Democratic aspirants did the grown-up thing.

I can only imagine how bitter that felt, given how high he had flown. And I can only hope that he and the rest of us never minimize that altitude.

Some other Democrat will carry the party’s hopes in November. Some other Democrat — please, God — will replace Donald Trump in the White House and both dull the memory of him and clean up his mess.

But no other Democrat will be able to claim a more surprising, disarming showing in 2020 than Buttigieg can. After the first two contests, in Iowa and New Hampshire, he had more delegates than anyone. He finished in the top four in all of the first four states to vote.

That was despite the fact that his highest political office was mayor of South Bend, Ind., with only about 100,000 people. That was despite the fact that he’s 38 and would have been the youngest person ever elected to the presidency.

That was despite the fact that he’s married to another man. For many Democrats Buttigieg’s sexual orientation made him a trailblazer and was cause for excitement, but for others it made him a risk and was cause to turn away. The degree of success that he nonetheless enjoyed reflected his ability to rise above stereotypes, to soar above identity politics and to pull voters up with him.

Buttigieg was the first major openly gay presidential candidate, and he challenged and changed Americans’ preconceptions of what such a candidacy would look like, as I wrote in a column just before the Iowa caucuses. One of the wonders of his unprecedented campaign was how little his sexual orientation was talked about as his bid progressed. That spoke to the range of political talents he brought to the contest and the breadth of the issues he engaged. He was a novelty who resisted being just that, a symbol who wouldn’t be content with mere symbolism.

Rush Limbaugh, to whom Trump awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in January, was more deviation than norm when he gawked at the hypothetical scenario of Buttigieg, as the Democratic nominee, “kissing his husband onstage next to Mr. Man Donald Trump.” Mr. Man? In a Buttigieg-Trump face-off, only one face would glow oddly orange, and only one head of hair would appear to be the work of a dozen tipsy sprites.

Of course Buttigieg, ever dexterous, had the perfect retort when asked about Limbaugh’s ugliness during a CNN town hall. “The idea of the likes of Rush Limbaugh or Donald Trump lecturing anybody on family values, I mean, sorry, but one thing about my marriage is it’s never involved me having to send hush money to a porn star after cheating on my spouse,” he said. “They want to debate family values, let’s debate family values. I’m ready.” Was he ever.

While some of his critics on the left conducted an offensive discussion about whether he was gay enough, he performed an important balancing act, integrating his gayness into his candidacy without letting his candidacy be defined by it, seizing teachable moments without ever becoming tendentious or tedious, showing the world that being gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgender or queer is an essential part of who we L.G.B.T.Q. people are but not all of who we are.

On Sunday night in South Bend, where he delivered a poignant valediction to his campaign before hundreds of cheering supporters, he noted that it had “sent a message to every kid out there wondering if whatever marks them out as different means they are somehow destined to be less than.” They could look at him, he added, “and see that someone who once felt that exact same way can become a leading American presidential candidate with his husband at his side.”

He was talking about the experience of being in a minority and being marginalized — about the sorrow and the fear — and one of the great disappointments of his candidacy was his inability to build a bridge between himself and others who have had that experience. He was getting better and better at it, though. He was ever more attentive to that crucial task — in his last debate, for example, and in his speech on Sunday night.

I listened to it and realized that what most impresses me about him isn’t his intellect per se — the fancy degrees he has, all the languages he speaks — or his crazy poise or the manner in which he handled the unconventional aspects of his candidacy.

It’s his thoughtfulness. I first met him in 2016, when I traveled to South Bend and spent half a dozen hours over two days in his company, and I remember being struck above all by how deeply he had examined and how carefully he spoke about issues like freedom, globalization, automation. He was a walking tutorial, and a sweetly earnest one at that. I wondered then if he could upsize that trait for a presidential campaign. Over the past year, I — and the rest of America — got the answer.

Sure, he turned prickly and even somewhat overbearing at times during the most recent debates, taunting Sanders, talking over him and trying to break through beyond Iowa and New Hampshire as the clock ticked down. But still he wrestled eloquently with the meanings of things.

I think that’s why my inbox was so crowded on Sunday night and Monday morning with emails from admirers of Buttigieg’s and by their expressions of regret. One email came from my friend Bob Kerrey, the former governor and senator from Nebraska and a onetime Democratic presidential candidate himself. He shared with me the daily reflection on events in the news that he writes to his teenage son. Monday’s was about Buttigieg.

“This morning I regret not throwing my support to Pete instead of Joe,” Kerrey wrote, referring to Joe Biden. “We need a generational change and with him out of the race, that is not going to happen. We need an outsider who knows that Washington must change, but now that is also not going to happen. We need a president who can speak the language of other nations, but now that is not going to happen.”

“I do not think my support of Pete would have enabled him to win,” he added. But, he wrote, “It would have made me feel a little better about his loss this morning. Americans have missed an opportunity to turn the page to a much different future. We should feel remorse at losing that future.”

On Sunday night Buttigieg said: “Politics at its worst is ugly. But at its best, politics can lift us up. It is not just policymaking. It is moral. It is soul craft.” At his best, Buttigieg demonstrated that.

He has an opportunity over the coming months to demonstrate it further. “I will do everything in my power,” he said, “to make sure we have a new Democratic president come January.”

Mayor Pete, I’m holding you to that. We all are. Because your power is remarkable.


Yes, I agree...his power is remarkable. And when I got on the Pete train, I vowed that I would ride it as far as we could make it go. But if it could not reach the White House, I always said that Pete is young, and he has a whole political career ahead of him. Governor, Senator, Congressman, and yes, another run at the White House! Potential and possibilities, that is all he has ahead of him.

I thank you too, Pete...now run for something else, because you will make a difference, even more than you already have!

Link to original article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/01/opinion/Pete-Buttigieg-speech.html

"Whatever Trump Is Hiding Is Hurting All of Us Now" by Thomas L. Friedman

Whatever Trump Is Hiding Is Hurting All of Us Now
Thomas L. Friedman | FEB. 18, 2018

Our democracy is in serious danger.

President Trump is either totally compromised by the Russians or is a towering fool, or both, but either way he has shown himself unwilling or unable to defend America against a Russian campaign to divide and undermine our democracy.

That is, either Trump’s real estate empire has taken large amounts of money from shady oligarchs linked to the Kremlin — so much that they literally own him; or rumors are true that he engaged in sexual misbehavior while he was in Moscow running the Miss Universe contest, which Russian intelligence has on tape and he doesn’t want released; or Trump actually believes Russian President Vladimir Putin when he says he is innocent of intervening in our elections — over the explicit findings of Trump’s own C.I.A., N.S.A. and F.B.I. chiefs.

In sum, Trump is either hiding something so threatening to himself, or he’s criminally incompetent to be commander in chief. It is impossible yet to say which explanation for his behavior is true, but it seems highly likely that one of these scenarios explains Trump’s refusal to respond to Russia’s direct attack on our system — a quiescence that is simply unprecedented for any U.S. president in history. Russia is not our friend. It has acted in a hostile manner. And Trump keeps ignoring it all.

Up to now, Trump has been flouting the norms of the presidency. Now Trump’s behavior amounts to a refusal to carry out his oath of office — to protect and defend the Constitution. Here’s an imperfect but close analogy: It’s as if George W. Bush had said after 9/11: “No big deal. I am going golfing over the weekend in Florida and blogging about how it’s all the Democrats’ fault — no need to hold a National Security Council meeting.”

At a time when the special prosecutor Robert Mueller — leveraging several years of intelligence gathering by the F.B.I., C.I.A. and N.S.A. — has brought indictments against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian groups — all linked in some way to the Kremlin — for interfering with the 2016 U.S. elections, America needs a president who will lead our nation’s defense against this attack on the integrity of our electoral democracy.

What would that look like? He would educate the public on the scale of the problem; he would bring together all the stakeholders — state and local election authorities, the federal government, both parties and all the owners of social networks that the Russians used to carry out their interference — to mount an effective defense; and he would bring together our intelligence and military experts to mount an effective offense against Putin — the best defense of all.

What we have instead is a president vulgarly tweeting that the Russians are “laughing their asses off in Moscow” for how we’ve been investigating their interventions — and exploiting the terrible school shooting in Florida — and the failure of the F.B.I. to properly forward to its Miami field office a tip on the killer — to throw the entire F.B.I. under the bus and create a new excuse to shut down the Mueller investigation.

Think for a moment how demented was Trump’s Saturday night tweet: “Very sad that the FBI missed all of the many signals sent out by the Florida school shooter. This is not acceptable. They are spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign — there is no collusion. Get back to the basics and make us all proud!”

To the contrary. Our F.B.I., C.I.A. and N.S.A., working with the special counsel, have done us amazingly proud. They’ve uncovered a Russian program to divide Americans and tilt our last election toward Trump — i.e., to undermine the very core of our democracy — and Trump is telling them to get back to important things like tracking would-be school shooters. Yes, the F.B.I. made a mistake in Florida. But it acted heroically on Russia. What is more basic than protecting American democracy?

It is so obvious what Trump is up to: Again, he is either a total sucker for Putin or, more likely, he is hiding something that he knows the Russians have on him, and he knows that the longer Mueller’s investigation goes on, the more likely he will be to find and expose it.

Donald, if you are so innocent, why do you go to such extraordinary lengths to try to shut Mueller down? And if you are really the president — not still head of the Trump Organization, who moonlights as president, which is how you so often behave — why don’t you actually lead — lead not only a proper cyberdefense of our elections, but also an offense against Putin.

Putin used cyberwarfare to poison American politics, to spread fake news, to help elect a chaos candidate, all in order to weaken our democracy. We should be using our cyber-capabilities to spread the truth about Putin — just how much money he has stolen, just how many lies he has spread, just how many rivals he has jailed or made disappear — all to weaken his autocracy. That is what a real president would be doing right now.

My guess is what Trump is hiding has to do with money. It’s something about his financial ties to business elites tied to the Kremlin. They may own a big stake in him. Who can forget that quote from his son Donald Trump Jr. from back in 2008: “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross section of a lot of our assets.” They may own our president.

But whatever it is, Trump is either trying so hard to hide it or is so naïve about Russia that he is ready to not only resist mounting a proper defense of our democracy, he’s actually ready to undermine some of our most important institutions, the F.B.I. and Justice Department, to keep his compromised status hidden.

That must not be tolerated. This is code red. The biggest threat to the integrity of our democracy today is in the Oval Office.

Link to the original piece in the New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/18/opinion/trump-russia-putin.html

The Truth

https://www.nytimes.com/

Amateur Hour At The White House: A Danger To The Nation

Republicans’ deal with the devil will cost them their soul

By David Brooks

New York Times

Many Republican members of Congress have made a Faustian bargain with Donald Trump.

They don’t particularly admire him as a man, they don’t trust him as an administrator, they don’t agree with him on major issues, but they respect the grip he has on their voters, they hope he’ll sign their legislation and they certainly don’t want to be seen siding with the inflamed progressives or the hyperventilating media. Their position was at least comprehensible: How many times in a lifetime does your party control all levers of power? When that happens you’re willing to tolerate a little Trumpian circus behavior in order to get things done.

But if the last 10 days have made anything clear, it’s this: The Republican Fausts are in an untenable position. The deal they’ve struck with the devil comes at too high a price. It really will cost them their soul.

In the first place, the Trump administration is not a Republican administration; it is an ethnic nationalist administration.

Trump insulted both parties equally in his Inaugural Address.

The Bannonites are utterly crushing the Republican regulars when it comes to actual policymaking.

The administration has swung sharply anti-trade.

Trump’s economic instincts are corporatist, not free market.

If Barack Obama tried to lead from behind, Trump’s foreign policy involves actively running away from global engagement.

Outspoken critics of Paul Ryan are being given White House jobs, and at the same time, if Reince Priebus has a pulse it is not externally evident.

Second, even if Trump’s ideology were not noxious, his incompetence is a threat to all around him. To say that it is amateur hour at the White House is to slander amateurs. The recent executive orders were drafted and signed without any normal agency review or even semicoherent legal advice, filled with elemental errors that any nursery school student would have caught.

It seems that the Trump administration is less a government than a small clique of bloggers and tweeters who are incommunicado with the people who actually help them get things done. Things will get really hairy when the world’s problems are incoming.

Third, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the aroma of bigotry infuses the whole operation, and anybody who aligns too closely will end up sharing in the stench.

The administration could have simply tightened up the refugee review process and capped the refugee intake at 50,000, but instead went out of its way to insult Islam. The administration could have simply tightened up immigration procedures, but Trump went out of his way to pick a fight with all of Mexico.

Other Republicans have gone far out of their way to make sure the war on terrorism is not a war on Islam or on Arabs, but Trump has gone out of his way to ensure the opposite. The racial club is always there.

Fourth, it is hard to think of any administration in recent memory, on any level, whose identity is so tainted by cruelty.

The Trump administration is often harsh and never kind. It is quick to inflict suffering on the 8-year-old Syrian girl who’s been bombed and strafed and lost her dad. Its deportation vows mean that in the years ahead, the TV screens will be filled with weeping families being pulled apart.

None of these traits will improve with time. As former Bush administration official Eliot Cohen wrote in The Atlantic, “Precisely because the problem is one of temperament and character, it will not get better. It will get worse, as power intoxicates Trump and those around him. It will probably end in calamity — substantial domestic protest and violence, a breakdown of international economic relationships, the collapse of major alliances, or perhaps one or more new wars (even with China) on top of the ones we already have. It will not be surprising in the slightest if his term ends not in four or in eight years, but sooner, with impeachment or removal under the 25th Amendment.”

The danger signs are there in profusion. Sooner or later, the Republican Fausts will face a binary choice. As they did under Nixon, Republican leaders will have to either oppose Trump and risk his tweets, or sidle along with him and live with his stain.

Trump exceeded expectations with his Cabinet picks, but his first 10 days in office have made clear this is not a normal administration. It is a problem that demands a response. It is a callous, bumbling group that demands either personal loyalty or the ax.

Already one sees John McCain and Lindsey Graham forming a bit of a Republican opposition. The other honorable senators will have to choose: Collins, Alexander, Portman, Corker, Cotton, Sasse and so on and so on.

With most administrations you can agree sometimes and disagree other times. But this one is a danger to the party and the nation in its existential nature. And so sooner or later all will have to choose what side they are on, and live forever after with the choice.

Link to original article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/opinion/the-republican-fausts.html