9-12 Unity?

September 11 is always difficult for me. Even though I personally didn't lose any friends or family on that day in 2001, I grew up in New York and worked several summers in the literal shadow of the World Trade Center. I always have to fight off a miasma of sadness on the days surrounding it. I usually refrain from making any comments, occasionally posting an image of my phone alarms, set for the times of the attacks. 

On September 11, 2001 I was seriously hung over when I found out what was happening. I was less than two months away from being thrown out of my own home and had just been ejected from the religious group that I had been involved with for decades. On Mondays nights I stayed up all night drinking so I wouldn't have to interact with my then-wife on Tuesdays, my day off. After hearing commotion downstairs, I stumbled into the living room where my kids were watching CNN. One of them told me that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. At first I thought it was a small single-seater that lost control, but it soon became obvious that it was something worse. There's no question that 9-11 was a day filled with horror, but I hear a lot around this time of year about how Americans were united on 9-12, and how that unity has faded away. But were we united?

"We" is a tricky term. Who is included in "we"? What I remember from the days following 9-11 was that a lot of Americans were united in a ramping up of xenophobia and an irrational thirst for retribution. What I remember is that every Muslim American became a target of hatred. There was no recognition that Islam is a religion that exists on a continuum, from secularized children of immigrants, to Americanized families who have been here for generations, to those who are observant, and yes, including violent fanatics and fundamentalists too. The hatred of the "other" wasn't narrowly focused on jihadists either, nor did it home in on all Muslims. Anyone who looked vaguely "Arab" was target, or any convenient brown-skinned person, even American citizens. The Islamophobia metastasized into a broad based fear of immigrants and calls to seal our borders and cut off immigration from all but a few "safe" countries. "We" were unified in our hatred and fear...for a certain value of "we". 

"We", in order better keep an eye on "them", supported the USA PATRIOT Act, which gave the FBI, the CIA and other intelligence agencies far reaching powers of surveillance and detention. Just for "them" you say? Let me introduce you to FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Originally passed in 1978 in order to legalize surveillance of foreign nationals alleged to be engaged in espionage, it was expanded, amended and reinterpreted in the wake of 9-11 and now includes the ability to wiretap US citizens in certain circumstances. 

And let's not forget the fact that we overthrew two foreign governments, one, Afghanistan, because it harbored bin-Laden (we eventually found him in the territory of a supposed ally, Pakistan) and the other, Iraq, that had nothing to do with the 9-11 attacks, based on lies about the intelligence. Afghanistan is fresh in our minds, just having been retaken by the Taliban, whom we displaced 20 years ago, but Iraq is no success story. In addition to being overrun by the so-called Islamic State, it has moved into the orbit of Iran, a nation that is far from being an ally. The initial toppling of two governments was relatively easy, but we had no plan for what to do next, and ended up propping up corrupt governments and getting bogged down in civil wars that had questionable national security value to us. Not only were Americans dying for reasons that were foggy at best, but "the troops" were deified to the extent that one couldn't criticize the military, or even its mission, without being branded as unpatriotic. The military's influence has grown so big that it wasn't until a third president who campaigned on extricating us was elected that we actually got out. 

Post 9-11 unity was an illusion.

Joe Biden - President from Hell?

He's suffering from dementia. He's a puppet. He's a traitor. He's incompetent. Impeach him. 25th Amendment him. There's plenty to dislike about President Joe Biden; his fifty-years-out-of-date handsiness, his behavior toward Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court hearings, his support of the Clinton era crime bill, his initial support of the invasion of Iraq, his tendency to shoot from the hip and propensity for "gaffes". Biden was far from the first choice of a lot of people during the 2020 Democratic primaries, but he prevailed over the rest of the Democratic field for several reasons. Despite the high profile of some of the more progressive-liberal candidates like Senators Sanders and Warren, the majority of Democratic voters were not supporters of the far-reaching systemic changes favored by the left wing of the party. Biden was in many ways a compromise nominee. He wasn't the favorite of a large percentage of primary voters, but he was someone the majority could live with. He was the "safe" candidate. 

Many of the labels that have been hung around Biden's neck are justified, he's been in politics for over four decades. Anyone who has been around that long is going to take unpopular stances, and some of their decisions are going to turn out to be wrong. But some of the more incendiary and insulting descriptions are nothing more than mud-slinging by political opponents. Accusations of dementia seem to be convincing to many of those who vote Republican. His sometimes disjointed speaking style is cited as evidence of his mental decline, as is his difficulty in recalling details when answering questions. We all know about his stutter. Anyone who has been around someone who has a pronounced stutter knows how difficult it can be to speak under pressure. Beyond the stutter, those who have never had to speak in public without a script, or answer questions which have complex answers, have no idea how difficult that is. Reading from a script or teleprompter is completely different than speaking off the cuff or responding to difficult questions. 

Looking back at recent presidents, Bill Clinton is one who comes to mind who appeared at ease answering questions and holding forth on government policies. Part of that is due to Clinton being extremely adept at the minutia of government. He was unusually involved in the nuts and bolts and less of a delegator than other modern presidents. He was also a consummate bullshitter. Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan seemed to be good communicators, but both men had a speaking style that communicated confidence and both were able to redirect questions and avoid specifics by spouting pre-prepared mini-speeches which didn't always answer the question. Gerald Ford and both of the Bushes came across as terrible public speakers, not because they didn't know what they were talking about, but because they lacked the debating skills and smooth delivery of Reagan, Clinton or Obama. Trump, on the other hand was great at demagogic posturing and could talk without a break for two hours, but in press conferences would resort to fabricating "facts" and outright lying when backed into a corner. Biden is more in the mold of the Bushes when it comes to his handling of questions and his ability to mentally access facts and figures. 

Of course, once his detractors grab on to the idea that Joe Biden is mentally incompetent, it's easy to jump to the next step:  that he is a puppet, controlled by Speaker Pelosi or Vice President Harris. They need no evidence for this; once they have made up their minds that he doesn't have the capacity to function intellectually, they feel that it's obvious that someone else is pulling the strings. Actual evidence points to someone who surrounds himself with experts and delegates appropriate authority to his subordinates, but who makes his own decisions. 

This brings us to a seemingly contradictory stance - that President Biden has engaged in treasonous behavior and should be impeached or should resign. Impeachment has only been used four times in our history. The first time, President Andrew Johnson avoided removal by only one vote in the Senate. Bill Clinton was never in danger of removal after his impeachment, nor was Donald Trump after his first impeachment, and he had already lost the election before his second impeachment. Richard Nixon resigned before he could be impeached and removed. Removal of a sitting president is a long shot. Not only would a majority of the House of Representatives vote to impeach him, which would likely require the other party to control the House, but two-thirds of the Senate would have to vote to convict and remove, an extremely low probability scenario.  In my opinion Donald Trump's actions more than warranted impeachment and removal, he solicited aid from a foreign government to undercut a potential (and eventual) political rival and supported and encouraged an unsuccessful coup attempt. Those were clearly corrupt acts. But even early in Trump's term there were calls for impeachment, before Trump had had the chance to do anything. There were similar calls from Republicans to do the same to Biden, days into his term. From fringe Republicans to talk show hosts, every time Biden takes an action that they don't like, or isn't successful, somebody is calling for impeachment or resignation. The Constitution doesn't list incompetence or policy disagreement as grounds for impeachment. Biden opponents act as if he is the first president who had to deal with a crisis, made decisions that went horribly wrong, or took legally shaky actions. We have Congress, we have the courts, and we have elections. 

In all likelihood, the most vocal Biden detractors are simply reacting to the resistance to the Trump presidency. They know that what they are saying is demagoguery, but they also know that it will rile up the pro-Trump and anti-Democratic masses, who don't know or understand that their leaders don't believe what's coming out of their own mouths. They also can't distinguish their own cult-like worship of Trump from what Biden's support is: an acceptance that once the primaries were over, Biden was the best option available, that we know he has faults, and that we don't like a lot of his policies, but we like enough of them to prefer them over Trumpublican hegemony. 

 

The Politicizing of Public Health

There have always been people who distrusted mainstream medicine. Many of these people cited religious objections to vaccinations (my ex-wife was one of these), and there were also many people who trusted more in "natural" remedies. But these people have always been a small minority. The fact that the vast majority of the population were vaccinated against the most deadly of diseases ensured that the likelihood that the unvaccinated would contract one of these diseases was vanishingly small. Occasionally we would hear about an outbreak of mumps or chicken pox, but usually it was among an isolated anti-vax community. For the most part Americans accepted that vaccinations were the best way to guard against epidemics and to minimize the harm that a virus would cause in an infected person. This has changed drastically in the last two years.

You hear a lot these days about "trusting the science", but science isn't a dogma, or a rigid set of facts, science is a method of reaching conclusions. Science questions assumptions and tests new ideas. Large swaths of the country don't understand this and point to examples when the scientific consensus was wrong to cast doubt upon scientific conclusions and guidance. One of the examples that crops up frequently is DDT, a pesticide that came into agricultural use in 1945, and was banned in 1972. DDT was an effective tool in the control of malaria and typhus, spread by mosquitos and fleas respectively; it was approved for agricultural use by the FDA. As time went on, opposition to its use led to more rigorous testing and an EPA ban on the use of DDT in 1972. The lesson that some people take from this is that the FDA was wrong, therefore we shouldn't believe that anything that they approve is safe. The lesson that should be taken is that the FDA was wrong, but due to scientific questioning of assumptions and rigorous testing, the scientific consensus changed and corrected its incorrect assumptions. 

In the early days of the Covid-19 outbreak, the medical community was flying blind. No one really knew the best ways to prevent transmission or to treat an infection. Guidance regarding masks and social distancing changed frequently, as new facts came to light. This could have been a moment when politicians of all parties came together for the good of the country, but it was not to be. 

The incompetency of the Trump administration dominated the approach to the pandemic and doomed its execution. Rather than getting all his experts in a room and agreeing on a strategy, Trump simultaneously abdicated any responsibility for a federal response and narcissistically took on his usual "only I can fix this" persona.  Infectious disease experts and epidemiologists were trotted out to make public statements and shortly undermined by ignorant pronouncements by Trump. Rather than lead by crafting a consensus, he sowed doubt of medical experts' views among his followers. At the same time, he insisted that the on-the-ground response be left to the states, who he undermined as well by suggesting that his followers "liberate" states where governors issued mask mandates or shutdowns of businesses. All the while he took credit when things went well and excoriated others when they didn't. By giving his own ego and image priority over public safety he set the stage for the widespread skepticism of the main "win" in the fight against Covid-19: the fast development of a Covid vaccine. 

The damage had been done. Rather than elation that a vaccine was now available, enabling businesses to open and make people safer, disinformation about the vaccine itself began to circulate, with ridiculous claims about how the vaccine was more harmful that the virus itself. While the last time I checked, a majority of adults had been vaccinated, it's a slim majority, less than 55%, with some states significantly less than 50%. And many of the anti-vaxxers are not content to quietly pass up a vaccination, but loudly and obnoxiously rage against vaccinations and those who champion them. And because infections and deaths are rising, predominantly among the unvaccinated, masks mandates are back, concerts and other large events are being cancelled, and businesses are suffering. The skeptics are now insisting that masks don't work, when the use of masks coupled with social distancing and hygienic practices corresponded with the reduction in infection and deaths. How different would things have been if then-President Trump had actually lead, by expressing confidence in his experts and coordinating with the states instead of knee capping them? We'll never know, but I strongly suspect that many of those politically opposed to the vaccine would be first in line for the needle. 

Trumpworld has always been a bizzaro world of opposites. Cult-like Trump sycophants unquestioningly believe things that he says that are easily shown to be lies, but point to his opponents as cultish. Despite the obvious and really unarguable reality that the vaccine has been politicized by Trump and his followers, some Trumpists insist that it's the Democrats who have undermined vaccine confidence and politicized the process. Speaker Pelosi's skepticism that the Trump administration was competent enough to produce and distribute a safe vaccine, especially in light of his musings about injecting bleach or shining light inside the body, was interpreted retrospectively to be undermining and politicizing the vaccines that were eventually produced, which she was a vocal cheerleader for. Ignoring the fact that Republicans and Rightists would hardly be expected to be moved by anything Pelosi said and Democrats and Liberals would be more likely to listen to medical professionals. Reality isn't a strong suit with Trumpists.

So, here we are, when we thought it would be over with mass vaccinations, with people still dying because they don't believe what the experts say.