On Respecting Opinions

On the eve of the upcoming election, I've noticed a surge in pleas to "respect each other's opinion." On the surface that sounds like an honest, sensible and heartfelt attempt to help alleviate some of the divisions in our country at the moment. After all, everyone is entitled to their opinion, aren't they?

Well sure, it's a free country, at least for now.  But on the same token, while we should grant others the right to their opinion, no one should feel in the least, the obligation to accept, or respect that opinion.

Here's an extreme example: Suppose a person is of the opinion that their own race, nationality or religion is superior to all others and therefore members of their group should be granted rights not granted to other groups? Not only do I vehemently disagree with that opinion, but I find it vile, repugnant, and entirely unworthy of respect. 

Here's another: What if someone believes in something that is verifiably false, such as the earth being flat? Are those of us who have come to the conclusion that the earth is not flat by personally witnessing empirical evidence to the contrary, supposed to agree to disagree?

I would hope not. The size and shape of planet Earth is an established fact, as it has been for thousands of years. It is not an opinion.

Opinions by definition can never be wrong. But opinions can be misinformed, illogical, unconscionable, and a score of other things that should reasonably disqualify them from respect.

Virtually every issue that is front and center in the current election cycle in the United States can be honestly and intelligently debated. I don't have the slightest problem with people who disagree with me on those issues and indeed I respect those opinions so long as they are well thought out and based upon credible evidence.

For example, I assume most people accept that we can't possibly grant residency in this country to every single person who wants it, as that would be an untenable situation, consequently there must a system that manages immigration. It is not unreasonable to argue that the current administration could have done better on that front. 

I also assume most reasonable people agree that it would be a mistake to ban all immigration as naturally all of us who are not among the indigenous American population, are descendants of immigrants if not immigrants ourselves, AND that immigrants continue to contribute a great deal of good to this nation.

Just exactly how to balance these two is a matter worthy of sincere and above all, honest debate.

The Republicans behind their standard bearer in the 2024 presidential election have made immigration the centerpiece of their platform. 

I agree with them that there is a reasonable argument that can be made for deporting some people who are here illegally. 

On the other hand, in my opinion, the blanket deportation proposed by the exPOTUS is short-sighted, not to mention morally objectionable, as it would create vastly more problems in this country than it would solve. 

For starters, in purely practical terms, much of our economy depends upon the labor of undocumented workers. Contrary to what the exPOTUS might have you believe, undocumented workers do not take away jobs from American citizens, they occupy jobs that the vast majority of American citizens would never do, especially for the amount of money those workers get paid. In a perfect world, everyone would get paid a fair wage for their labor but in the real world, the idea of paying ten dollars for a single tomato at the grocery store or twenty dollars for a head of lettuce picked by U.S. citizens making a living wage would make even the most fair-minded of us re-evaluate our well-intentioned values. 

In addition to the inflation many cite as their primary reason for voting for the exPOTUS this time around, we are also experiencing a housing shortage which has been exacerbated by a labor shortage. Many folks working in the construction industry, as Donald Trump could (but won't) testify as he's hired many thousands of them as a real estate developer, are guess what, undocumented workers. It doesn't take an economic genius to figure out what a wholescale Trump deportation program would do for the housing problem.

Deporting tens of millions of undocumented immigrants is one of the exPOTUS's handful of campaign promises. It doesn't help that Trump and his running mate are unapologetically promoting outrageous lies to attempt to cast illegal immigrants as the source of every problem this nation faces. 

I must say it's a little difficult to take the immigration problem seriously when the best these guys can come up with are fantasies of Haitian immigrants eating pet cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio, that criminal elements from Venezuela are taking jobs away from hard working honest-to-goodness American criminals in Aurora, Colorado, and that immigrants as a whole are coming to this country to take away "Black jobs." 

Another sweeping solution to all our problems from Trumpworld is imposing stiff tariffs on all imported goods. Again, you don't need a doctorate in economics to understand who will ultimately pay for those tariffs, the consumer. You think inflation is bad now, just wait.

Yet despite the Republicans' dubious agenda, imbecilic exaggerations and outright lies, people in this country are legitimately struggling and feel that government at the moment is not doing enough to help them. I can't fault people for wanting to vote out of pure self-interest, even if they haven't quite thought the whole thing through.

Nor can I completely fault single-issue voters, the people who feel that one issue above all others is so important that it trumps, no pun intended, all others, and are willing to overlook a candidate's shortcomings because they feel he or she best represents their view on that particular issue. There are many such issues but the two I'm specifically thinking of at the moment are abortion and the War in Gaza.  

Unlike the issues mentioned above, finding compromise on these particular issues is exponentially harder as many Americans stand firmly on one side of the fence or other, without any intent of considering the other side. I won't go into detail because I've written extensively about both issues, here's a piece on abortion and here is one of many on the Middle East War.

All I'll say is that emotions run at a fever pitch for many Americans who will undoubtably cast their vote based solely on one issue, come hell or high water. 

Do I understand their opinion if they choose to vote for Donald Trump if he happens to appear to be on their side on one of those issues? Yes. Do I respect those opinions? I'll get to that in a moment.

If you know me or have been reading my political posts, and admittedly there have been way too many of them since 2016, you know that I have about 30,000 reasons, one for every lie he told while he was president, why I wouldn't vote for Donald Trump even if he were the proverbial last person on the earth. 

But those are my opinions, so who cares.

On the other hand, I have reasons that go beyond opinion. You see I happen to love my country despite its faults. I deeply believe in our Constitution, in participatory democracy and in the Democratic-Republic we have managed to nurture along for nearly a quarter of a millennium. 

In that time we've had our share of good presidents, bad presidents, and so so presidents. All of them except one, have had a few things in common, a profound love of this country, a deep respect for our system of government and the document that holds it all together, and an understanding of the meaning of the office of President of the United States, especially in regards to the limits imposed on the job both by tradition going all the way back to George Washington, and by law.

This is what General John Kelly, the man who served the longest as President Donald Trump's Chief of Staff had to say about his former boss:

A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior (General Mark Milley) who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason – in expectation that someone will take action. A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law. There is nothing more that can be said, God help us.

Ah, you say, that's just the opinion of one man who obviously has a chip or two on his shoulder against Trump.

Fair enough. 

Nevertheless, Donald Trump is uniquely unqualified to be president, period. This is not an opinion, this is a fact of the law as spelled out in the U.S. Constitution, Article Three of the Fourteenth Amendment to be exact. I've mentioned it before, but it bears repeating: 

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

(Emphasis mine)

You can dance around those words all you want, but the fact remains that on January 6th, 2001, Donald Trump relinquished his right to return to the office of the presidency when after exhausting his legal rights to contest an election he lost, he sent a mob from the White House to the Capitol Building for the sole purpose of interfering with an official act of government, intended to declare his opponent Joseph R. Biden, President of the United States. 

People, including police officers as they were defending the Capitol Building, died as a result of that attack on the most sacred symbol of our democracy, while Trump gleefully watched it all unfold on TV, refusing to lift a finger, which is all it would have taken for him to stop it. 

In a bi-partisan vote, Congress determined that yes, what happened on January 6th was indeed an insurrection and that Donald Trump as its chief instigator, did in fact, engage in it, albeit from a distance. For that he was impeached for the second time. 

My opinion of Donald Trump notwithstanding, Trump's actions on that day and those leading up to it, disqualify him from being president according to the Constitution, just as they would have disqualified any president, good, bad or indifferent who would have done the same.

One week from today, we will be electing our next president but only one of the two major party candidates, Kamala Harris, has shown any intention of actually being president if elected. In his words and in his deeds, Donald Trump has proven again and again that he has no interest in being president. He might like to be king or dictator perhaps, but not president.

Not only does he continue to defend the indefensible by maintaining his lie that the last election was stolen from him, but he declares solidarity with the people who on his behalf, desecrated our Capitol and killed and injured scores of Capitol police, by referring to the murderous insurrectionist traitors as "we."

Perhaps even more disturbing if that is possible, Trump has recently taken it upon himself to describe people, both public servants and private citizens who oppose him as "enemies from within, more dangerous than any foreign adversary." Yes that includes the likes of Kin Jun Un and Vladimir Putin, who according to Trump, are more dangerous than people like me and anyone else who opposes him. Despite attempts at damage control from Trump loyalist FOX News talking heads trying to reign him in, Trump doubled down by suggesting using the "military if necessary" to go after these people, in other words, U.S. citizens, our fellow countrymen.  

It's impossible to consider this and not think of historical figures who have said the same thing and carried out their plans.

Now, calling a politician you disagree with a fascist and comparing him or her to Adolph Hitler is certainly a tired cliche which should be avoided if at all possible. 

I will say this unequivocally, Donald Trump is no Adolph Hitler. 

But he sure appears to want to be. 

In addition to declaring his detractors as "enemies of the people", he continuously channels Hitler by using phrases directly linked to the German dictator such as "poisoning the blood of the people" in reference to immigrants. He has used the term Hitler used, "vermin" to describe his political opponents. Cruder still, out-Hitlering even Hitler style rhetoric, again referring to immigrants, Trump just this week called the U.S. under the Biden/Harris administration, "a garbage can for the world."

Then there's this.

The article written by Jeffrey Goldberg for The Atlantic titled: TRUMP: I NEED THE GENERALS HITLER HAD, reveals tidbits into the mind of Trump through conversations he had with his aforementioned Chief of Staff and retired four-star general John Kelly, and other high-ranking members of the inner circle of the Trump administration. 

Some of the main takeaways from the article are Trump's profound lack of historical perspective, his ignorance of the U.S. Constitution, and his complete lack of respect for the military. Here Goldberg quotes retired General Barry McCaffrey:

The military is a foreign country to him. He doesn’t understand the customs or codes... It doesn’t penetrate. It starts with the fact that he thinks it’s foolish to do anything that doesn’t directly benefit himself.

But the main takeaways from the article are Trump's fascist tendencies and his admiration for Der Führer which we've been hearing about all week in the news, starting with the quote revealed in the title of the Atlantic piece. Simply put, Trump rejects the American ideal that members of the armed forces take an oath to the constitution, not the president. The generals he longed for were ones who would serve and obey him, not the country, just as he imagined Hitler's generals did. If that isn't a mockery enough, Kelly had to point out to Trump that on several occasions, Hitler's generals tried to assassinate him.

OK you get it, I don't like Trump for many reasons, some of them personal opinions, some of them not. It's the ones that are not, like his betrayal of our country and its democratic norms on January 6th, and the revelations from those close to him that he really wants to be dictator (not much of a surprise there), that make me realize no American who takes this country or our constitution seriously, regardless of their political ideology, has any business supporting him. 

That is what makes the current alliance between the Harris/Walz campaign and die-hard conservatives like the Chaneys so compelling. These are people who despite their profound ideological differences are coming together because they share one idea in common, that country comes before party, ideology, and everything else.

The thing is this: out of the plethora of issues facing us, we should all be able to agree to disagree on the multitudes of ways to address those issues. But for those of us who believe in our in our system of justice and government, flawed as they are, we should all agree on one thing, that no one in our country is above the law, not even the President of the United States. 

There in a nutshell is the most basic foundation of our democracy. 

No one should ever expect or be expected to agree with all or any of the policies of the president. The truly special thing is that we all get to directly address our objections every four years. 

But the one thing all of us must expect from a president, is that he or she lives up to the solemn pledge made before God and country at inauguration, to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." 

If he or she refuses to do that, then truly nothing else matters. 

And that is a fact, not an opinion.

Immigration Man

Kamala Harris did so well following my advice before her debate last month with Donald Trump that I thought I'd offer the same service to her running mate Tim Walz for his debate with J.D. Vance this evening.

You may recall that on the day of her debate, I suggested that Harris be mindful of her facial expressions which would be visible on the split/screen during Trump's time on the microphone. Be careful I said to her, not to do what Joe Biden did during his July debate:

Hers should be a look of dismissal rather than of abject horror which lost a lot of points for Joe Biden ten weeks ago.

She took my advice and ran with it, way beyond I could ever imagine. I went on:

We all know that Trump absolutely relishes being thought of as a badass, as a tough guy who takes no prisoners. But brushed off of as irrelevant, that drives him crazy, possibly to the point of spontaneous combustion.

I think her high point in the debate came early on when she emotionally and eloquently argued about how the Supreme Court's Dobbs Decision overruling Roe v. Wade has been an unmitigated disaster which has put the lives of scores of American women in jeopardy, while I might add, not reducing the number of abortions in this country, which I'm assuming is the whole point of the Pro-Life movement.

But the turning point of the debate came when she brought up massive snooze fests, otherwise known as Trump rallies. You can call Trump a thief, a grifter, an adjudicated rapist, a convicted felon, a wannabie dictator,  an existential threat to democracy, or a whole slew of other really terrible things, and he doesn't bat an eye. In fact I think Trump takes those accusations as compliments. 

But suggest that people are so bored by his stream-of-consciousness ramblings that they leave his rallies in droves while he's still speaking, and he goes apeshit. He may not have spontaneously combusted as I predicted, but he did the next best thing, going off on a diatribe about how immigrants, legal ones at that, are stealing people's pets in Ohio and eating them for supper. When challenged, he doubled down, insisting it's true because he saw it on TV.  

If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes and heard it with my own ears, I wouldn't have believed it either. 

As has been well established, the pets of Springfield, Ohio are perfectly safe.

That didn't stop Trump's running mate from running with the story of Haitian immigrants dining on the Fidos and Whiskers of Ohio. In his defense, Vance said it was justifiable to report a false story in order to bring home the gravity of the situation of illegal immigration. 

But here's my question: if illegal immigration is so bad, why does he have to make up stuff to point that out?

So here's my advice to Tim Walz:

Run with it. Be relentless in pointing out that Trump and Vance are lying to the American public and not even caring enough to hide it. 

If they're lying so openly about their strongest issue, what's stopping them from lying about every other issue?

They say that illegal immigrants are causing untold harm to the American people by taking American jobs, that's a lie, they're not. 

They say crime is up in the country, mainly because or undocumented immigrants. That's a lie, crime in general is actually down from the days of the Trump administration and all the evidence shows that immigrants commit far fewer crimes (understandably so) than do native born Americans.

They say that the Biden/Harris administration wrecked the U.S. economy. That's a lie, the economy they inherited from Trump caused in large part, but not entirely by the pandemic was in shambles, in danger of slipping into a recession. That did not happen, and the biggest concern about the economy, inflation which was a direct result of the pandemic and is a world-wide problem, has decreased in this country to the point where the Federal Reserve last week deemed it safe to lower interest rates that were implemented in order to help bring down inflation.

These are Trump and Vance's supposedly "strong" issues which when you look closely at them, are based upon garbage information and outright lies. That's not to mention their "weak" issues, lot sof doozies there too.

Tim Walz shouldn't be afraid of confronting these issues, nor should he or Harris be afraid of owning the accomplishments of the Biden/Harris administration, because the other side's portrayal of them as an abject failure, and their "plans" to improve the lives of everyday Americans, is nothing by smoke, mirrors, and a ton of lies. 

Naturally, Walz isn't going to win over the base, if Trump told them Joe Biden is currently waging a zombie apocalypse against the United States and has appointed Kamala Harris as its Tzar, they'd believe him. 

But if Walz can convince the handful of voters in a small number of states who will ultimately decide this election that there is nothing but bullshit to back up Trump's and Vance's campaign promises, maybe this national nightmare of ours will be over.