Tag Archives: MAGA

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SETTLERS

Perhaps it’s our nature to believe that, as Pangloss says in “Candide,” “all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.”

Especially for Americans. We’ve been the world’s most prosperous country for a century or so. So we have a standard of living that is pretty high – and certainly much better than those struggling in poor or war-ravaged countries.

So complacency is a default mode. 

The problem with complacency is that it runs into another aspect of nature – aspiration. We want to be better. We want to be the best.

Sometimes that’s not so good. This must be the greediest period I’ve known in my 71 years. Those who have a lot want a whole lot more. A Republican Congress passes a tax bill that disproportionately favors the wealthy. Tesla tries to make Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire. A CEO grabs a tennis player’s autographed hat from the kid he gave it to.

But more often than not, aspiration is a positive. Staying the same is almost impossible, because time affects everything. But trying to get better, to do better – that is how we make progress and advance society.

Most of the people who have come into this country without documentation didn’t do so to take away American jobs or flout American laws. They did so because of an aspiration to live a better life than one of fear or deprivation in their native country. That aspiration was so strong that they didn’t let the inability of this country to figure out how to let them in legally stop them.

The people of the United States could have responded in kind – double entendre intended. They could have realized that while this country has led the way in exploration and innovation, nothing stays the same. You have to keep growing to stay a leader. 

And the key ingredient to American growth has been taking new ideas from people of different backgrounds and synthesizing them into progress.

So welcoming immigrants has always been in our best interest. 

Unfortunately, that is not the path the plurality of voters chose last November.

And forget complacency. That would be a positive compared to what they voted for.

Regression.

It’s in the phrase. “Make America Great Again.” Implying that America isn’t great now. That the path of inclusion is not the way to a better future. That the restrictions and limitations of the past were a far better way than adapting to changing times.

So you have three paths for what might no longer be the world’s oldest democracy.

— Moving forward. Taking the gift of fresh blood and ideas, and then parlaying them into a stronger, safer, more equitable society.

— Moving backward. Thinking things were better without regard to people who are different from the majority of the country. That the old ways of doing things, that the old rules and laws, that the old ideas about society and science are the path to happiness.

— Complacency. Believing you can fight off change or the reversion to the old norms. Saying things are OK as they are and attempting to weather the storm that’s brewing around us.

There’s a part of me that thinks the plurality of Americans is in the third group.

If we stay quiet, if we don’t encourage but don’t discourage the reactionaries in our midst, they’ll burn themselves out or just get tired. Let’s hang on to what we’ve got.

As if that is what will allow us to keep it.

We’ve become settlers – and not in the pioneer sort of way. We’re ready to settle for what we believe is peace. 

But that’s not how it works.

We shouldn’t want to preserve democracy. We should want to improve it. Abolish the Electoral College. Make it easier to vote. Limit the spending and campaigning so that we’re not so overwhelmed by political ads and social media posts.

We should want to maintain our standard of living. We should want it to grow. We should do what we can to eliminate poverty, hunger and homelessness. We should aspire to new technologies – not just in developing iPhone 17s, but in transportation and medicine. We should make sure our children, elderly and disabled are cared for without straining a family. We should ensure that every one of us is entitled to love who we choose to love and be loved by who chooses to love us.

We should not settle for what we have. We should want more – and we should want it enough so that everybody who wants more gets a fair shot at getting it.

That’s obviously not happening now. Now is the autumn of our discontent.

But before we can fight to end MAGAism and Trumpism, we must know what we want. And what we should want is not for things to stay the same, because they can’t.

It’s September 11, the 24th anniversary of the worst attack on the American homeland that we can remember. Let’s resolve not to be afraid – as we’ve been too often since that sunny day in Manhattan and Virginia –  of adversaries foreign and domestic, the bin Ladens and the Trumps. 

Let’s not settle. Let’s strive to be better.

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DE MORTUIS NIL NISI BONUM. EXCEPT…

James Dobson died last week – and if you didn’t hear the news about that, it might be because the cheering drowned it out.

Not a lot of people in my circle of acquaintances know anything about Dobson, which is something worth discussing in itself.  If you didn’t, Dobson was an evangelical author and the founder of such fundamentalist organizations as the Family Research Council and the radio program “Focus on the Family.”

The short way of describing Dobson is that everything you loathe about Christian fundamentalism in contained in the works and words of Dobson:

The school children murdered at Sandy Hook were God’s retribution for homosexuality.

Women in a marriage consent to sexual activity in exchange for the protection provided by a man. 

Girls speak twice as many words a day as boys.

And the only way to get a child to behave the way you want is through painful punishment.

Dobson spread this stuff, Family Research Council claims, to 200 million people around the world. It was his way of combatting what he perceived to be the permissiveness that was swept into society beginning in the 1960s.

He was MAGA brainwashing before Trump’s ascent. He was the anti-Dr. Spock.

A persistent theme in the social media posts about Dobson’s death is the idea that his philosophies and teachings are the reasons adult kids have nothing to do with their parents.

Among the more common phrases on the Bluesky site: “rot in hell,” “rest in piss,” “good riddance.”

I found out about Dobson during the early days of the Internet when I tried to start a parenting news website called Raisin. I kept seeing press releases from Family Research Council and its mouthpiecs. Gary Bauer, a former Reagan administration official who tried to run for president in 2000 and got less than 1% of the vote in the New Hampshire Republican primary.

So that’s how I became acquainted with their extreme ideology.

As I said, most of the people I know have any idea about any of this. They’re not evangelicals and they certainly would be more apt to follow trained child psychologists’ advice about how to raise their kids. 

My friends and acquaintances would be horrified by the thought that their children might be afraid of them. Their operating theory is that a child is conceived in love – and that’s the guiding principle in their upbringing.

So think about it. There’s an America where Mr. Rogers, Elmo and Arthur are the heroes. There’s another where a wooden implement is the dominant force.

It might explain what’s at the root of our super divided society. The old ways of doing things vs. the thought out way of doing things. If you can see a “Make America Great Again” philosophy in this retro view, it’s understandable.

To the point that there was actual glee in Dobson’s death at age 89.

The Romans believed that of the dead, you should speak nothing but good. To which actress Bette Davis, when hearing about the death of rival Joan Crawford, supposedly said “You should never say bad things about the dead, only good. Joan Crawford is dead. Good.”

It seems cruel to pick on dead people. I get it.

But there’s a reason the Munchkins sing “Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead” when Dorothy plops the farmhouse on the Wicked Witch of the East. Some bad stuff was going down in Oz, and until her demise, the Munchkins were suffering.

It’s a little more serious here. Thousands of adults who are troubled or estranged from their parents are wishing that some god really did strike people down with lightning. it was just too late when it came to Dobson.

The lessons I take away are twofold.

One, I think I’m OK, but I really hope I have lived my life in a way that my passing is not reason for anyone to celebrate.

Two, I can think of at least one person who’s a constant presence in our lives these days whose death might be celebrated more than Dobson’s. I, for one, have Champagne on ice for that one.

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BEWARE THE SHINY OBJECT

This is THE thing.

Jeffrey Epstein. He’s Trump’s kryptonite.

His files – once and if they’re ever revealed – will show Trump’s mendacity to all his worshippers. The disclosures in there – about how Epstein procured Florida girls to provide companionship for his A-list clients. Including Donald J. Trump, who once referred to being best friends with Epstein.

This. This is what will make all the MAGA types sit up and take notice. This will show them what he really is, how he’s duped them for years about who he is.

If you watch TV or social media or just walk around and hear desperate Trump haters talk, you know what I’m talking about.

This is the scandal that won’t go away. His supporters won’t let this go away, despite his rantings on Truth Social and in the White House, where he is supposed to be working for us.

Yeah. Right. Sure.

It wasn’t that long ago that the fracture between Trump and Elon Mask was the event that would break MAGA fever. That without Musk’s financial support and with his opposition to the budget framework, the bill would fail to pass.

How’s that going?

There are people who think Trump is bothered by all this Epstein talk. They’re Charlie Brown believing Lucy is going to hold the football as he kicks it.

Jeffrey Epstein died at his own hand in a New York prison cell in 2019. He had been arrested once before – in 2005 – on child sex charges. But his punishment from Florida officials – including one who later became Trump’s Secretary of Labor – was beneath lenient, and many of the girls who were victims had no idea of the easy terms.

The Miami Herald, led by reporter Julie Brown, shed new light on the case in 2018 and that’s how Epstein came to face the federal charges that resulted in his suicide. 

When those stories were published, they were mandatory reading for the journalism class I taught at WIlliam Paterson University in New Jersey. I told students – when they would ask how long an assignment should – that it should be as long as it takes to tell the story well. Most often, that’s three paragraphs. In the case of “Perversion of Justice,” it was thousands of words.

It was a disgusting tale and, of course, it immediately attracted denial from Trump – who was president in 2018, not Joe Biden or Barack Obama. 

Was Trump somehow involved with Jeffrey Epstein’s cruel and disgusting business? Look at the pictures and then try to convince yourself otherwise.

If you have half a brain, that exercise won’t last long.

But like everything else with Trump, he has a way of rolling off these things that’s super- – or sub- – human. 

And the people who support him – the ones loudly proclaiming they’re through with him over his administration’s failure to “release the Epstein files” – are – I’d say – about 10 days away from doing a George Costanza. 

They’re going to act as if nothing happened.

Yes, MAGA people used Epstein as a centerpiece of their message that Washington elites – particularly Democrats – are pedophiles and belong locked away forever. Or rubbed out. It helped get Trump support that helped blind people to the things in his agenda that would harm them.

Let’s face it, next to child sex allegations, tariffs on Canadian lumber and penguins in the South Pacific aren’t nearly as salacious (well, maybe the penguins). The absolutely insane notion of attempting to fire the Federal Reserve chairman that Trump bandies about will probably decimate your stock portfolio – but isn’t the Ghislaine Maxwell stuff so much more titillating?

Epstein is yet another of Trump’s shiny objects aimed at distracting you from mass deportations and climate change failures. He’s right, actually, when he says there are more important things to worry about – like how Texas miserably failed to protect girls at a summer camp from flooding or how Netanyahu seems intent on setting the entire Middle East on fire.

In the end, I predict one of two things will happen.

One is that he “begrudgingly” releases the Epstein files (I know Pam Bondi is the name of the releaser, but independence is not a word she’s trained to understand). Lo and behold, there are no prominent names in there. Somehow. Or somehow they’re all people who’ve run afoul of Donald Trump over the past 79 years.

Two is that he stonewalls. At some point, his followers are led to the conclusion – probably by some pseudo-holy clown like Franklin Graham – that maybe certain “elders” should be allowed to partake of 15-year-old females. 

And then the MAGA crowd decides, hey, maybe that’s right. Shouldn’t our leader be infallible in his judgment of what’s proper?

Sounds far-fetched, huh? 

Think about this.

Donald John Trump was convicted by a jury of his peers of 34 felony counts of fraud.

A jury in a civil suit found he had raped E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s. Other women, including his ex-wife, sued him for various forms of sexual misconduct. He made the “Access Hollywood” tape bragging the free reign he thought he had with women. He’s accused of deliberately walking to the dressing room of teenage girls during a beauty pageant he ran.

If not of this stuff is bad enough to make people realize what a horrible piece of human excrement Trump is, what makes you think that anything he did with his buddy Jeffrey Epstein will change any MAGA moron’s mind?

Sure, let the Epstein thing play out. Justice should always be served.

Just don’t count of any consequences when it comes to the 47th presidency of the United States. They haven’t happened yet.

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O SAY, CAN YOU SEE?

I’m not one for performative patriotism.

But recently, I’ve had a lot of thoughts about a performance of the National Anthem I saw.

It was before the start of a Mets game at Citi Field in New York. The day was chilly – the temperature never rose above 47 degrees. At least it was sunny – I sat close to the field and the  sun beating down helped keep things comfortable.

On an aesthetic level, I’ve never been a big fan of “The Star Spangled Banner.” My argument boils down to this – the nation that produced George Gershwin, Duke Ellington, Carole King and Stevie Wonder should not be represented by a Maryland lawyer’s poem sung to the tune of a British drinking song.

The song is hard to sing. It’s a so-so message. And, in the dumb way the United States seems to think of patriotism, it’s about a flag.

(Getting hung up on the flag is also the problem with the Pledge Of Allegiance. That’s a topic for another time.)

Another issue is that the government of the United States has not inspired any fervent love since, oh, noon ET on January 20. The inanity of Trumpism clouds every decent day and exacerbates the lousy ones.

This was particularly true when this anthem was performed. It was five days after the Mets’ home opener against the Toronto Blue Jays, the only Major League Baseball team that makes its home outside this country.

Until 2025, no one gave much thought to the rendition of “O Canada” when a Canadian team showed up in a U.S. stadium. But then Trump, not content with taking a dump on the rest of the world, decided to pick on the best neighbor any country has ever had.

That led to the boos from about a tenth of the crowd. Forget that some young woman is performing before 40,000 people and hearing disdain from about 4,000 people. She’s doing her best, but, yeah, boo anyway. 

I wasn’t shocked by this. But I was not going to follow that wretched display by singing “The Star Spangled Banner” with these slugs. 

So I found what I thought was appropriate- bowing my head as if this were a moment of silence, in memory of what we as Americans have lost because of this stupidity. (It also made me respect, all the more, what Colin Kaepernick did by kneeling – had I stronger knees, I might have thought about it.)

Fast forward five days. It’s only going to be the U.S. anthem at the game on the cold day because the Mets were playing Miami. I get up, remove my hat and bow my head.

And then I hear the anthem.

It was performed by a chorus of students from the Celia Cruz Bronx High School of Music. It is one of the special high schools in the New York City public school system – you need to go through an audition process to get in.

And, for the few who don’t know, it’s named for one of the most influential Latin musicians in U.S.  history. She left Cuba shortly after the revolution and made great music with another renowned Hispanic artist, Tito Puente. Her influence was such that, if you look in your loose change, you might have the quarter with her image that came out last year.

The chorus performed a capella. You had to think about that, because the harmonies created were so lush that they seemed like an orchestra.

What was striking was that these students – from all over New York City and most, but not all of them, kids of color – were putting incredible passion into this rendition. Maybe it was because they wanted to impress thousands of people hearing them. 

But that kind of performance requires more than showing off your musical chops. It was as if they believed they were honoring their home with the magic of their combination. There was commitment to their vocalizing. 

When the National Anthem is performed at a baseball game, it’s pretty pro forma. As the singer finally gets to the last lines – “O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave…” – the crowd usually starts cheering, almost as if to rush things along and get the game started.

Not this time. The crowd didn’t want to miss the end. They didn’t start cheering until the chorus was finished. And it erupted. It was as if we heard this song that we’d heard more times than we can count for the first time ever.

I wasn’t expecting to be stirred by a song I don’t like. But I was – and I’ll tell you why.

Those kids aren’t what Trump and the livestock that support him have in mind about making America great again. And I’m sure the worst of them – Trump included – would never appreciate the care and devotion the Celia Cruz chorus put into the song. They would prefer you stand there listening to some band go through the motions. 

But the students are what truly makes America great. Their backgrounds are varied and fascinating. When they came together that chilly afternoon, they made a sound that haunted and inspired.

I will still bow my head for “The Star Spangled Banner” in sadness until this idiocy ends or it destroys me, whichever comes first. But as long as I can, I will fight for a country that includes and celebrates diversity, equity and inclusion – and understands that a mosaic is a far more interesting and wondrous work of art than a whitewash.

And, if Taylor Swift or Beyoncé can write a better anthem, please go at it.

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MAYBE THEY’RE THE ONES WHO SHOULD ACTUALLY READ IT

One of the tenets of MAGAism is that their opponents haven’t actually read the Constitution of the United States.

If they did, they “reason” (that’s not a word easy to apply to these people) that we’d all understand why women and people of color should be second-class citizens, immigrants have no business being here and everyone should arm to the teeth.

So, let’s take them up on the challenge. And because people tend to stop reading after the top of the page – especially when a document is started in 18th century English – let’s start from the bottom. With the last six amendments to the Constitution, numbers 28 to 23.

— 28th Amendment: Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

Here’s the first bone of contention.

What’s commonly known as the Equal Rights Amendment was supposed to have been approved by three-quarters of the state legislatures by 1982. It came up three states short by the deadline. But since 2017, three states – Nevada, Illinois and Virginia – have voted to ratify.

After the 2024 presidential election, Democrats pushed to have President Biden declare that the amendment was ratified. They were not acting without legal support – the American Bar Association agreed that the amendment could be enacted. Even after the deadline – and even after six states changed their mind and voted to rescind ratification.

Biden sort of said “Why the hell not?” and declared the amendment ratified, especially given the two-year clause for taking effect had passed.

He knew that the idea that men and women are equal under the Constitution – something not specifically spelled out in the 237+ years prior – would piss the hell out of Trump and the pet rocks who support him.

The idea of ignoring deratification has precedent. Southern legislatures tried to do that with the 13th and 14th Amendments, the ones that abolished slavery. For once, the Jim Crow types lost – those rescinding moves were ignored.

Ignoring the seven-year deadline for ratification is another matter. It isn’t part of the amendment’s text (READ THE CONSTITUTION!), so whether it has standing is in dispute.

My thought here is this: After all the unchecked actions taken by Trump in the first three weeks of this debacle, it’s pretty rich for the right to complain about something Biden declared following approval by the requisite 38 states. 

Best of all, if you happen to be a woman who disagrees with my position, your rights are protected under this 28th Amendment.

— 27th Amendment: No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.

The only people I can imagine opposing this are those who sought Congressional seats to make bank from the public payroll.

Basically, nobody in the current Congress – the 119th – can collect on a vote to raise their pay until the 120th. And that’s after the people of their state or district have a chance to consider whether that pay raise is a good idea.

— 26th Amendment: The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.

This amendment passed just in time for me – I turned 18 the year after its ratification and voted for the first time in the 1972 New York presidential primary.

No amendment has been ratified faster than the 26th. That’s surprising, because its adoption came at a particularly fraught time – in the midst of all the protests of the Vietnam War and during the administration of Richard M. Nixon, who was not perceived as the kids’ choice.

Opponents thought 18-year-olds were too immature to pass judgment on civic matters. There was just one problem with that – they certainly appeared to be mature enough to die in a Vietnamese rice patty.

The 26th passed with widespread support in both parties. There are many on the right who would like to take that back. 

Good luck with that.

— 25th Amendment: In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President. Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress. 

Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President.

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.

Troppe parole! They needed a lot of words to resolve what they saw as a complicated problem.

Here’s one simple thought:

Had Trump tried to stage the insurrection in December 2020 instead of January 6, 2021, there’s a good chance that last sentence would have been invoked by Trump’s cabinet. Starting with Mike Pence, who was the guy who the MAGAts wanted at the end of a rope.

It is clearly not going to be invoked by this bunch of pillbugs. And it certainly wouldn’t pass the muster of supplicants like House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune.

The dolts in this cabinet are loyal to Trump. Not to the Constitution. There’s no provision in the 25th for the people of the country to attempt removal of someone as clearly unfit as Trump.

— 24th Amendment: The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay poll tax or other tax.

A lot of the MAGA types, when they tell us to READ THE CONSTITUTION, think that there’s some need to require voter ID to exercise your franchise.

The 24th Amendment can be construed as an answer to that. 

Poll taxes were imposed in the South as a way to restrict Black adults and less affluent whites from voting. There were also citizenship tests with really dopey questions aimed at frustrating people.

Can voter ID be construed as a poll tax? Yeah.

Voter ID is not free. It’s something like a driver’s license or a passport. You are requiring people to get these things whether they want them or not – and whether they can afford to pay for them or not. 

That applies to any other of the stupid rules being enforced by states like Texas, Georgia and Florida. They violate the 24th Amendment.

READ THE CONSTITUTION!

— 23rd Amendment: The District constituting the seat of Government of the United States shall appoint in such manner as Congress may direct: A number of electors of President and Vice President equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives in Congress to which the District would be entitled if it were a State, but in no event more than the least populous State; they shall be in addition to those appointed by the States, but they shall be considered, for the purposes of the election of President and Vice President, to be electors appointed by a State; and they shall meet in the District and perform such duties as provided by the twelfth article of amendment.

Remember that whole thing about taxation without representation? Well, welcome to Washington, D.C.

Living in the nation’s capital doesn’t afford you the same rights as someone living in Washington, Illinois. You don’t have senators or a representative in the House. Your local legislative body has no power to change the Constitution. So laws in this country are made without your input.

Thanks to the 23rd Amendment, Washingtonians have some say in who lives on one of the biggest pieces of property in town. But they didn’t get that right until 1961 – for 174 years, they were completely powerless.

There’s one big reason why Washingtonians won’t get any more rights anytime soon. It’s the fact that 62% of the population isn’t white. That scares the hell out of people in the red states – imagine two more senators and one representative voting in the interest of people of color.

MAGA types talk about feelings of helplessness against the system. They don’t seem too bothered by the idea that there are Americans who are Constitutionally helpless against the system.

Admitting D.C. as a state or amending the Constitution to require representation are the only ways to right this wrong. That ain’t happening.

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MAKE AMERICA GREATER

There are just four days left in the Biden administration and it is my intention to enjoy each one as a gift.

A decent, hard-working man – perhaps a bit too old for the job but still good at it anyway – graced us from noon ET on January 20, 2021 to this coming Monday at noon. Like every other presidency, Joe Biden’s wasn’t perfect. But it came as close as any in my lifetime.

Joe Biden guided us gently out of the gloom of the COVID-19 debacle inherited from the guy who’s replacing him. They might be a pain in the butt, but all those highway construction projects you see are making our roads – along with the rest of our infrastructure – more suited to the century we’re now a quarter of the way into.

He stood for Ukraine when Vladimir Putin got frustrated by waiting for his imperial dreams to come true. He combatted climate change and showed respect for people who have been traditionally belittled in American society.

The American economy is the strongest in the world. He managed to blast America’s way out of the pandemic-induced recession and then brought the growth lower with a brief spike in inflation.

That spike, however, did in both him and Kamala Harris. And so we get Trump again for four years – assuming the blowhard makes it to age 82.

—-

Both Joe Biden and Barack Obama spent way too much of their presidencies cleaning up the messes left by their predecessors.

Biden, of course, had the aftermath of the pandemic. Obama faced both the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and an American military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I suspect just about everyone reading this and liking it agrees there will be an equal or worse clusterfuck to deal with four years from Monday.

And yet, that’s the mistake we make and the other side doesn’t.

We concentrate on fighting them. They fight us – don’t get me wrong – but they also develop new, crueler, stupider ideas to foist on both the left and the cucumbers who voted for them in November. 

There will be a lot of angst to go around. But part of their gameplan is to frustrate us – to make us concentrate on their latest perverse idea or vendetta.

Right now, you’re seeing it with the wildfires in Los Angeles. How California is a failed liberal experiment and the disaster is due to a combination of its godlessness, diversity and economic initiatives. Just check out some of the comments from Wyoming Sen. John Horsesasso.

It’s meant to drain our energy. And it has to, at least to some extent. You can’t claim to be a decent human being and then deny aid to Los Angeles, or just uproot millions of people living and working here peacefully because they didn’t get the documents you demand. Or tell women they risk prison or worse if they try in any way to end an unwanted or dangerous pregnancy.

But we need to be better this time. And the way to do that is to think about what we want to do to make America greater.

See, I think Peruvian restaurants and Hmong gymnasts and Somalian-born soldiers make this country great. Not McDonald’s or Walmart or Tesla – or not by themselves, anyway. 

And it certainly is not a hateful convicted felon who is absolutely clueless about what it takes to lead an amazing land.

So we need to advance our agenda. To come up with ideas we think will improve our country and, maybe with it, the world. 

They don’t have to be popular now. Some absolutely won’t be. But we need to advance the case so that we can sell them from conviction and evidence. And begin the process of educating and converting some of the just shy of 50% of American voters who actually chose Trump over a really smart, energetic woman.

Over the next five weeks, I’m going to put forward some ideas I’ve thought about as ways we can show how we’re looking toward 2100, not 1900.

The ideas:

— Universal basic income: This is what Andrew Yang promoted when he ran for president in 2000, and then got weird. 

Both liberals and conservatives have reasons to like this idea. But Trump and his supporters will see it as free money (that they don’t think they’re getting) and squawk.

— Police reform. I bristle every time I see a car with one of those black versions of the American flag and the blue stripe in the middle. As if policing in this country should go unquestioned and unfettered. 

But when you see three or four cops together, do you feel safer? Or nervous? And do the answers depend on what you look like? Frankly, few things are in more need of improvement in this country than how we police ourselves.

— Immigration reform. Trump and his minions don’t want to reform immigration. They want to abolish it – unless you can make a considerable donation to the GOP after you get here. The question of how we treat people coming here, for more than four centuries, is one of our greatest dilemmas. 

We should aspire to be better than that – this doesn’t seem like that intractable a problem if we come up with creative and humane solutions.

— Getting around. It’s believed one of Trump’s first executive orders will be to maximize oil production and end credits for electric vehicles – the short-sighted, idiotic “drill, baby, drill” mantra.

Let’s get past both those forms of transportation – there have been few innovations in creating new ways to go places compared with communication technology. Let’s encourage imagination.

— Kindness. Mean will be in power starting Monday. Mean will be the default approach of the White House, Congress and Supreme Court. Mean will drive the stories you see on the news and the attitude of the plurality. If you don’t believe that, explain why a house near me still flew its “Fuck Biden” and “Fuck Kamala Harris” flags as late as New Year’s Eve. 

We have to create new, innovative ways to be kind – to look out for people who are pariahs to the MAGAs. Kindness is our not-so-secret weapon for making America greater – a task that will be easier once we get past Trump and his ilk.

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