Anti-Vaxxers

Why are some people so militantly against, not only the Covid vaccine, but any mitigation efforts? The loudest voices, at least this week, seem to be shouting about freedom. There are two paths of discussion regarding freedom. One is vaccine mandates. Until recently, no governmental entity was instituting mandatory vaccination with the exception of the military. Vaccine requirements are nothing new for the United States military, new recruits receive a number of vaccinations upon entering basic training and receive additional inoculations upon being deployed to certain locations. So, sorry soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen and guardians, your freedom is circumscribed for as long as you are in the service, and that includes the Covid vaccine. (The Biden Administration has recently mandated vaccinations for employees of businesses with 100 or more employees - more on this later).  

 What we are seeing is some businesses and public events requiring proof of vaccination to enter their premises or participate in their events. In many instances this is coupled with a requirement to wear a mouth-and-nose covering. Agree or not, a private company has the right to decide who will enter their business as long as they do not discriminate against anyone based upon a protected class. Of course this goes for businesses that require that you don't mask up as well - I disagree with the reasoning behind such a move, but support their right to do so. Much of what we're seeing lately in the way of furious opposition is at school board meetings where school districts are requiring that all teachers and students wear face masks on school grounds. Again, the rationale is "freedom". 

Despite the reality that in the United States "freedom" doesn't mean and rarely has ever meant that we have license to do whatever we want to. There are speed limits, zoning laws, taxation, regulations of various kinds, licenses and fees required for many professions and activities. Even though untrammeled liberty is more a fantasy than a reality, our culture persists in elevating personal freedom over community responsibility. Virtually every religion makes a virtue of altruism, taking care of your brothers & sisters is admired, the Good Samaritan parable is held up as aspirational; yet when push comes to shove, it's "look out for number one". If Americans believed their own mythos of community and valued it over individualism, they would be glad to do whatever it took to protect, not only themselves, but the greater community. 

There are times when we cannot depend on private businesses or individuals to do the right thing. Read up on the history of the labor movement and the growth of unions in this country. Businesses didn't do the right thing. People were worked to death, sometimes literally; there were no safety regulations; pollution via the waste products of various industries was rampant; there was literally cocaine in soft drinks and "health products"; and must I remind you, a lot of people were enslaved! There are times, when for the greater good, government, as the representative of the people and the steward of our well-bring, must step in and legislate, direct, or mandate what individuals or corporations are unable or unwilling to do. The partial mandate that people get vaccinated or suffer various consequences is not a new phenomena, but consistent with historical public health or other emergency measures. 

In my opinion, cries of "freedom" are only an excuse and don't tell the whole story. The other part of the resistance to vaccination and common sense protective measures is an hysterical belief that the people who have spent their lives becoming experts either don't know what they're talking about, or are lying in order to exert some ephemeral control over the populace. While eschewing the expertise of those who know what they're talking about, they latch on to unproven remedies and conspiracy theories. They search for the tiniest of problems and blow them out of proportion. They readily accept the craziest and most implausible of stories while claiming to be skeptics who don't follow the government like sheep. If these irrational anti-vacciners had complied with public health measures instead of hysterically digging in their heels, we likely wouldn't need mandates. 

The vaccines are not experimental. They have been tested and approved. Are they 100% effective? Do masks protect us completely? No and no. What is effective is a combination of widespread vaccination, mask wearing in public, social distancing, and sanitation. If large segments of the population refuse to take any of these precautions, the virus will continue to mutate and spread. With the exception of the small percentage of people who are medically unable to get vaccinated, the anti-vaxxers are just plain ignorant and are contributing to the continued spread of Covid-19. 

Their objections are based on ignorance. 

The Bastard is Still Out There - Part II

 In addition to his supposed business acumen, the other selling point for Losin' Donnie's candidacy was the perception that he could "tell it like it is" and that he understood and was a friend of everyday Americans. There's a verified paper trail of Trump's consistent screwing over working Americans: time after time when he didn't pay small contractors or suppliers and used his resources to draw out court battles that the little guy couldn't financially maintain. But even without those facts, why does anyone think that an alleged billionaire, who used to live in a penthouse literally covered in gold, who now lives in an actual country club, has anything in common with, or even sympathizes with, the average working American? So what about Losin' Donnie appealed to so many people? 

Could it be...hatred?

Despite the recurring whining about "that's not who we are", for a large segment of our population, hated-filled is exactly who we are. We have a long history of hatred for, persecution of, and discriminating against, the "other" among us. I don't need to outline every example for you to know it's true. Trump's campaign started and finished with stoking fear and hatred of those who were deemed "not real Americans" and even more so for those who wanted to come here but were viewed as unsuitably different than us. Did he originate this mindset? Of course not, but his one skill has always been self-promotion and salesmanship despite general incompetence. He very quickly identified that hate, not hope, would bring him the greatest support. There's an audio clip of Donnie shouting out that he loves the poorly educated. And he surely does, because he knows that most Americans are not educated on the nuances and details of domestic or foreign policy and make decisions based on emotion. And he tapped into that basic of the emotions - fear - to stoke hatred and foster a perverted us versus them scenario. 

And what did he do for the average working Joe or Jane? He gave them rallies. He gave them tweets. He insulted his opponents and categorized them as "enemies". His one legislative achievement was to slightly reduce the individual income tax rate after promising to overhaul the tax code to eliminate loopholes. Few if any loopholes were done away with, but corporations, and by extension the wealthy who run them, received a significant reduction in corporate income taxes. His executive orders mainly benefitted large corporations. His presidency was a bloated vanity project and an opportunity make a few extra (million) bucks. 

Not that politics has ever been a Sunday School picnic, but in a few short years hatred has become the winning strategy, at least in Republican circles. The aforementioned poorly educated have bought into his pseudo-agenda - Trumpism and its attendant fixations are de rigueur for any Republican running for public office, from US Senate all the way to local school boards and small town mayoral races. And there's the distinct possibility that he will run again...and win. 

The bastard hasn't gone away.

The Bastard is Still Out There - Part I

Losin' Donnie lost. I was looking forward to never hearing from him again, but he and his sycophants are still dangling the possibility that he will run again, that he didn't "really" lose the election and Republican politicians and would-be office holders are tripping over themselves to prove who is the Trumpiest. The truth is, that he's still around and he and his brand of hate-based politics is here to stay.

Anyone who followed the tabloids in New York, or followed Losin' Donnie's career looked at Trump as a clown. He inherited a pile of money upon the death of his father (who padded his real estate empire's bottom line with fraud) and immediately set about to crowd out his siblings. It's been said that if Donnie had simply placed all of his inheritance into mutual funds he would be far richer today than he actually is. Despite being handed the world on a golden platter, Trump wasn't satisfied with being an under-the-radar lord of apartment complexes in Queens, no, he wanted to swim in the exclusive waters of Manhattan's moneyed elite. Not satisfied to be anonymously well-off, not only did he want to operate in the high rent environs of Manhattan, but he wanted to be recognized and lauded for his real estate ability. The problem was that he was utterly incompetent at it. He had inherited his father's facility at fraud, but none of his ability to create wealth. What he was good at, was self promotion. 

Any objective analysis of Losin' Donnie's career would reveal failure after failure in real estate and most notably, casinos. Despite his demonstrated ability to lose money and run his businesses into the ground, he managed to time after time convince banks to keep loaning him money and for investors to continue to sink funds into his ill-fated projects. The seemingly endless stream of cash continues to prop him up to this day. While one might think that a serial screw-up would eventually fade from view and be unable to fund his lavish lifestyle, Trump seems to have defied common sense (and the rules of accounting). After the first few failures, Trump learned how to structure (or hire lawyers who knew how) business arrangements so that if things went well, he benefitted, but if they didn't, he was shielded by the use of limited liability companies (LLCs). 

An LLC on one hand will shield its owners from liability while the profits will flow through to those same owners. What if, as in the case of Trump's casinos, the LLC loses money? The owners get to claim it as a loss on their personal income taxes, but aren't actually presented with a bill for that loss. In addition, Trump usually paid himself a developer fee, consulting or management fee that was not tied to the profit or loss of the property. So if the venture tanked, he still received his hefty fee, and got to reduce his taxable income by his share of the loss. If the upfront money was provided by investors, he wasn't personally out any cash. If the project was funded by a bank loan, he habitually defaulted.

So why is he perceived as a successful businessman? "The Apprentice". 

The real world Trump was a serial failure who defaulted on loans, mismanaged businesses, didn't pay contractors and was a bumbling idiot when it came to the myriad details of running a successful business. But the fictional Trump presented on "The Apprentice" painted him as a business genius, and this is the image that people who didn't know any better had of Losin' Donnie. Based on tax returns obtained by The New York Times, Trump's primary income in the nineties was from his work on "The Apprentice", and not from any of his real estate ventures. His actual businesses were losing money, enabling him to pay little or no federal taxes for a decade. Of course his television appearances, paired with frequent coverage in the New York tabloids gave him celebrity name recognition that would serve him well when he rode down that escalator in 2015. 

Trump's fictional business acumen was one of the selling points of his candidacy in 2016. Of course, even being a successful businessman doesn't necessarily translate into being an effective president, governor or legislator. In business, the bottom line is paramount - not so in the world of governance. (But that's another article) Nonetheless, the myth persists being CEO of a large corporation constitutes relevant experience for the office of President of the United States. A lot of Americans bought into that myth, as well as the lie that Losin' Donnie was actually successful. 

Gridlock

Why isn't anything getting done? We got rid of Trump, we elected a Democrat, the House of Representatives has a majority of Democrats, with Vice President Harris' tie-breaking vote, the Democrats have a Senate majority...so why can't Biden's agenda get implemented?

There's several reasons. The main reason is that the majorities in both houses of Congress are razor-thin. And the coalition of special interests that make up the Democratic Party are not in lock-step agreement on how to proceed on many, if not most things. There's a lot of criticism thrown at Senators Manchin and Sinema for obstructing the President's plans, and there's plenty of stones thrown at Senator McConnell as leader of the Senate Republicans for opposing virtually everything the Democrats do. There's the argument that 81 million people voted for Joe Biden because they wanted to see his policies enacted, 7 million more than voted for Trump. That's a pretty weak argument in my view. How many of those 81 million were conservatives at heart, but couldn't stomach another four years of Donald Trump? How many were Democrats who supported other candidates in the primaries? The fact that Democrats in the House of Representatives saw a net loss of seats, with many districts seeing more votes for Biden yet still electing a Republican representative, should give one pause. My neighbors to the north in the Omaha-based District 2 gave Biden their electoral vote while returning Republican Don Bacon to Congress. 

The truth is that on many issues Americans are split pretty evenly. While the filibuster is not something that is provided for in the Constitution, and it has been, and continues to be, used for nefarious purposes, do we really want a narrow majority making sweeping changes that are anathema to the narrow minority? Those of us of a more progressive mindset are frustrated at the inability to implement progressive legislation in the current Congress. But it would not take much for the tables to be turned. Currently there are 220 Democrats and 212 Republicans (plus 3 vacancies - the vacant seats were held by 2Ds and 1 R) in the House of Representatives. If just five districts flip, then the Republicans regain control of the House. Just a net change of one in the Senate and McConnell is once again in charge. Of course with a Democrat in the White House there's not much damage a Republican Congress can do, but based on McConnell's track record, you can forget about any federal judges being confirmed for the rest of Biden's term of office. But my point is that if the Republicans regain control of Congress, and even if they elect a Republican president in 2024, it will still be pretty evenly split - just with the other guys in charge. 

Will we still be so against the filibuster when it's our only chance of preventing right-wing legislation from being enacted? 

A counter argument is that the Republicans have no problem with playing dirty - with changing the rules when it suits them. We have seen that time and again, especially in the McConnell regime. The changing rationale for denying a president a Supreme Court nomination is a case in point. McConnell and his caucus have shown no shame in changing the rules of the game for their own benefit. Why shouldn't the Democrats take the action that the Republicans would surely take in the same situation and eliminate the filibuster in order to advance the progressive agenda. After all, they eliminated it when it looked like the filibuster would stand in the way of confirming Trump's Supreme Court nominees. The problem with that scenario is that the Democrats aren't united. Like it or not there are two Democratic Senators who lean conservative, one of whom would likely lose his seat if he voted for much of the progressive wish list. So, even if the filibuster could be killed, there's a high likelihood that 50 votes (plus Harris' tie-breaker) wouldn't be forthcoming in most cases, so it would be a meaningless gesture that would do nothing but open things up for future Republican abuse. 

Look for an immediate (and even long-term) future of continued gridlock. 

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.