Network of Mutuality

We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

Martin Luther King, Jr. from Letter from a Birmingham Jail,  4/16/63

Nobody's right if everybody's wrong

There's battle lines bing drawn and nobody's right if everybody's wrong.

Paranoia strikes deep.

Into your life it will creep.

It starts when you're always afraid.

Step out of line, the man come and takes you away.

     Stephen Stills  From What It's Worth

Cover by Billy Porter with Stephen Stills

Look out for each other. You don't have to be right.

Bill Maher was Right: Trump was never going to go of his own accord

 

If you recall my post on this blog from Oct 13, I referred to Bill Maher's often repeated statements over the course of the Trump presidency that he would never leave voluntarily.  Bill was right.  The ongoing drama of the past 3 months since the election proves this true.  After the tragedy of last week's riot and deaths in the Capitol, the Constitution has worked though creaky and even Republicans congressmen and senators are starting to abandon him. His staff are vacating the west wing of the White House. No one tries to defend him not even his press secretary.  

What did we learn from this?

• The people who work on actually administering elections at the local and state level do a great job. They are diligent, work very long tedious hours and persevere through harassment at a local level (examples in Detroit and Philadelphia) and even hold up at the state level as we saw in Georgia after the President pressured and threatened the governor and the secretary of state who are fellow Republicans.
• The courts work. In lawsuit after lawsuit challenging the election results, the state and federal courts did their duty. It didn't matter if they were Republican judges or even judges appointed by Trump himself. They followed the process and the law.
• The Congress did its duty as a whole. A majority of legislators followed the Constitution.  
• Of course, we had some standouts who were craven opportunists, Cruz and Hawley stand out. But, they are just trying to appeal to the Trump base in hopes for running in 2024.
• We learned that there are a large amount of people who supported Trump. They are populists and believers in conspiracy theories. They don't know history and our laws and government. They are aggrieved and believe in a demagogue. We learned they can be violent and when in a mob, lose their minds 
• Trump is a failed man and a disaster as President. Now that Twitter has abandoned him, he is the bully who has been defanged and is fading from the public consciousness.

Conspiracies

I've thought about conspiracies a great deal. I know people from my hometown who were friends, graduated from college, and hold responsible positions in their communities. I cannot explain the belief in lies. I think that regarding conspiracies, many people including me have considered their possibility. I first became aware when I was a teenager and read the novel Captains and the Kings by Taylor Caldwell. In the novel an Irish immigrant builds a fortune and becomes part of a group of wealthy industrialists and financiers who control affairs of the country.  This particular story has the protagonist trying to make his son President of the US which was so similar to the story of the Kennedys and the plotting of Joseph Kennedy for his sons. Then there is the current television series the Blacklist on NBC featuring shadowy and powerful figures running the Cabal which controls the governments of the great powers. 

Perhaps it comes from the realization we all have at some point that we don't understand what is going on in the world and how things come about. I think we realize there are people who are probably smarter that we are, people who have more money, and people who have better connections.  All this is true.  Yes, people who know each other and who have resources do have opportunities most people don't have. Yes, we are aware of the power of cliques starting in junior high school. Yes, monopolists like to keep their secrets, pricing arrangements and control intact. When you are disadvantaged or even manipulated by the system, you resent that system and justifiably so. You look for explanations but some stories are just that, stories.

This is why we need to stop bullying in junior high school, offer opportunities to the disadvantaged, bring minorities into the mainstream, and go for diversity. We need to have antitrust laws and regulators. We need fair taxes and tax enforcement. We need to stop cheaters. Truly, everyone needs a fair shake. We need to trust the government and I think we can trust that the government ran fair elections based on my first two points at the beginning of this post. 

 I don't believe the Democratic party with all its divisions and inability to craft a good marketing message is capable of election fraud. Those yahoos cannot conspire to save their political lives; what makes anyone think they could pull off massive voter fraud in a voting system that is totally decentralized and not leave any evidence. No conspiracy, period.