Newt Gingrich is, as always, trying to eat the cake and have it too. He lambasts the left for rejecting president Trump in 2016, and then uses that as an excuse for rejecting president Biden in 2020. He then has the gall to insinuate that rejecting Trump was wrong, while rejecting Biden is somehow just.

And thereby misses the entire flaming, extinction level asteroid of a point:

There were very clear reasons (you know, those rational pieces of an argument that Gingrich and the right seem to have entirely abandoned) for rejecting Trump specifically, on personal, ethical, moral grounds, whereas the right's rejection of Biden rests predominantly on the same old ideological tropes that we must never allow to discredit elections. Biden has a leftist agenda? Well, that agenda seems to have won him the support of the nation. One ideology, preferred by a majority of voters, is never less relevant or right than another, preferred by a minority. Painting with the broad, disingenuous ”good vs evil” brush is never productive or justified: we need to see bad positions and bad actors for what they are, with a purposeful focus that doesn't devolve into guilt-by-association.

Let me spell it out:

The left rejected Trump (and Trump alone) on moral, ethical, criminal grounds.

The right is rejecting Biden (and the Democratic party) on ideological grounds.

These two are not the same.

With Trump, it has never really mainly been about political ideology; it's always been about the man himself and his shamelessly self-serving agenda. The man is a huckster and a con artist; a grifter of the first order. An arsonist in charge of the fire department, fundamentally unsuited for public office, and every bit as destructive for the Republic as the Founding Fathers once cautioned. He has steamrolled every presidential norm and turned government into a revolving door of personal influence peddling and corruption, sold out entire agencies and departments to special interests, and pardoned criminals and corrupt associates – letting Flynn, Stone and Manafort, who lied for him, off the hook, while not pardoning his one-time personal henchman Cohen, who dared speak up against him. This speaks volumes as to his self-serving motives. Politics barely even enter into it.

And that Newt Gingrich is very conveniently whitewashing, in all his pent up white old-man anglo-saxon christian resentment. He once again reveals himself to be the bad faith actor he has always been, and incredulously tries to turn one man's towering moral flaws into some kind of twisted foundational ideological principles. Quite a feat of disingenuity.

I don't know why anyone gives Gingrich a platform from which to speak at all anymore – he is as much the father of modern ideological division as anyone. He has himself been a consistent driver of the one-sided, unreasonable, winner-takes-all political gamesmanship begun by McCarthy in the 50s, and that we see exhibited today in the Senate by McConnell et al. To observe Gingrich write foaming-at-the-mouth op-ed pieces where he tries to further stoke these flames of division is tedious, nauseating and shameful, if not surprising.

It is high time for Gingrich and his foul, destructive ilk to STFU and fade away into the obscurity he has always deserved.

The health of this republic requires for them to go away.

Every Christmas, people sending gifts and holiday greetings across the nation brings attention to the same recurring problem: The United States Postal Service is in crisis. It is hemorrhaging money and will default on its obligations if Congress doesn't step in (summarized well by NPR here).

Conservatives continue to peddle the destructive narrative that the USPS (and many other publicly funded services) should operate in accordance with free market ideology. The Hill unashamedly flaunted this nakedly biased think tank piece on the subject. We can't really expect such opinion pieces to ever present a nuanced take on a public service, and should demand a more transparent and honest look at these very troubling issues.

In regards to the situation of the USPS specifically, conservatives like to pretend like the deliberately punitive effects of The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act aren't real. To illuminate the effects of this highly destructive law from the opposite side, progressive think tank The Institute for Policy Studies reported that the Postal Service would have posted operating profits from 2013 through 2018 if the costs of the law's retiree health care mandate were removed from the USPS financial statements.

Former USPS Inspector General David Williams testified before Congress, arguing that the health care mandate was "The number one problem for postal operations".

This is ultimately a philosophical policy issue about public service, and since Republicans are (perpetually) on the opposite end of that issue, to pretend like they aren't responsible for the plight of the USPS (or other government agencies) is just fundamentally dishonest.

Obviously, Reagan’s "starve the beast" credo is at the very heart of this, and to pretend that it doesn't cause damage is either ignorant, or deliberately misleading. Conservatives oppose government funding of most services that work for the benefit of the public, and try to force privatization, which often amounts to a sell-out of public assets (which were paid for with taxpayer money), a continuous depletion of funding for public services, and a general sabotage of the public good.

The USPS shouldn't be a business but a government-funded service for the benefit of the public. This op-ed has it exactly right.

I remember Donald Trump Jr. using the one poisoned Skittle in a bowl full of Skittles as an analogy for why muslims shouldn't be allowed entry into the country, because of the hypothetical risk that one of them might be a terrorist. (For context, an average of 21,000 ppl were killed each year in terrorist attacks over the past decade, worldwide).

But when it comes to the survival rate of this pandemic, he's apparently fully comfortable with the entire population taking handfuls of COVID Skittles, filling up the bowl and then going for seconds. The 300,000 Americans who had the misfortune of eating an infected one and actually dying from it... well, it's just like the flu, no big deal.

It may have been different at some point in history, but today, Americans remain among the most propagandized people on Earth.

Why else would you reject a social safety net for the people, but accept taxpayer bailouts for corporations and the wealthy?

Why else would you consider universal healthcare unaffordable and unfree, but give up a substantial portion of your paycheck to health insurance companies through policies controlled by your employer?

Why else would you deny young people an affordable education that would benefit all of society, and instead levy predatory lending practices that will keep them in debt for the remainder of their adult lives, while benefiting only the finance industry?

Why else would you accept legislation defined through (legal!) corruption and lobbying schemes, where corporations set the legislative agenda through a system that allows them to outspend the citizens on their way to complete oligarchy?

It makes no sense.

100 republican lawmakers, state attorneys general and state representatives have joined in the filing of an amicus brief with the Supreme Court, to overturn what by all accounts was a perfectly legitimate election outcome. They are simply trying to muscle through a dismissal and disenfranchisement of the vote of the people, which has already been checked, double-checked and certified by all regular instances, awaiting only the ruling of the electoral college.

What worries me about this is that so many GOP operatives now have their heads so far up Trump's rectum, it is virtually impossible for them to pull out with any shred of dignity or credibility intact – which means they will have to dig in even further. Their political careers can't sustain them walking around post-45 with Donald's stench surrounding them, and his feces dripping down their faces. So, this has now literally (and unnecessarily) become an entrenched fight for their political survival –- there is no way for them to do an about-face at this point, and the desperation is starting to show.

If they had just stood up for some very basic democratic principles from the get-go, based on very unambiguous court rulings and an election system we are all bound by, it wouldn't have had to come to this fabricated "with us or against us" type of brinksmanship, where conflict mongerers like Rush Limbaugh are screaming from the sidelines about secession.

Every day that goes by, it becomes more and more difficult to reconcile these Trump-driven divisions - and we HAVE to reconcile them.

There is no way to proceed as a society where there is no decisive determination of official truth –- not even through the court system. If we can't accept even a legal ruling in the highest instance of our courts, then we effectively live in two entirely different realities.

I can understand why beliefs of voter fraud arise.

Despite our increasingly global village, we still live in relatively isolated bubbles – even more so at this stage of the COVID pandemic. This leads us to naturally see things through a very narrow lens, and while the advent of globally networked social media has exposed us to broader perspectives, it has also allowed, or even forced us, to subjectively focus this lens on even more specific subsets of reality. It can be difficult to open that lens up to recognize a larger truth – one that deviates from the narrow one we see with our own eyes, on a day-to-day basis.

Moreover, with the amped up tenor of the political discourse over the past ten or twenty years, people have become married to increasingly contrasting, polarized positions of amplified importance. The binary narrative ”it is either us or them” – perpetuated by a media machine that seeks drama and entertainment instead of fact (because a good story wins more eyeballs and generates more clicks) – has led us to become more and more easily swayed by fearful messaging. We have become twitchy with paranoid notions of good and evil, failing to see that our differences are really not as great as the shadows on the wall lead us to believe.

Make no mistake: voter fraud allegations are very serious, and should be examined. Democracy is brittle, and if we don't protect it, the integrity of our society is at stake. Assuming that we can deem such allegations to have merit, it is incumbent on us to at least investigate them, simply because it would be to risky to dismiss them out of hand. We should absolutely remain vigilant.

But once we have responded to the initial alarm, and verified with some degree of certainty that it was actually false, reason HAS to take over. We cannot continue to listen to those who cry wolf indefinitely, or we become dangerously reactive, and liable to perpetuating falsehoods.

In addition, there has to be consequences for continuing to cry wolf well beyond the stage of reasonable concern. We cannot allow ourselves to continue to react to frivolous cries of ”fire” in a crowded room, causing unnecessary chaos and panic where we are clearly, empirically able to determine that there is no smoke, hence there must be no fire.

When we act rashly in response to untrue assertions of danger, we gradually numb our ability to react appropriately when and where real danger actually presents itself.

The people who at this stage continue to howl about voter fraud – be it earnestly or disingenuously – are causing real damage. We have to hold them responsible for their unfounded, conspiratorial (or delusional) accounts.

If we allow the misinformed (or unhinged) kooks to set the agenda, we gradually lose the ability to tell truth from fiction.

Our society cannot sustain it.

We are witnessing our democratic processes grinding to a halt, with red-faced, screaming politicians treating our politics as a bloodsport, where winning is the only thing that matters.

But politics are not a sport. There are only solutions, no medals. Politicians are not competing athletes. They are put in place through elections in order to govern, and make educated decisions for the good of society – ALL of society, not just those who elected them.

A country cannot function when half of the population decides to fight every desire and wish of the other half. We move forward through negotiation, compromise and collaboration – not polarized, blood-thirsty contest.

The two main parties and the entire media apparatus have been so busy painting a black-and-white picture for so long, where interests are portrayed as opposed: a matter of right and wrong, good vs. evil. Unfortunately, too many people have bought into this simplistic, binary scenario – to the point of perceiving people with different views as enemies.

But this is not what society looks like. This will not yield productive outcomes that serve the public's needs. Society is a complex patchwork of people with differing opinions and different desires, and we all need to recognize this. We cannot sustain grinding down this patchwork, this inherent diversity and multitude, into a binary yes or no.

If we accept no less than 100% of what we want, while refusing to accept even one measly percent of what someone else wants, we are not a functioning society, and we don't live in a civilized world: we're a primitive pack of self-serving animals.

Please, people. Try to recognize the humanity in those you have been conditioned to view as your opponents. They live lives much like yours. They have families much like you. They have jobs much like yours, drive cars much like yours, have mortgages just like you, get sick and need care just like you.

They VOTE just like you.

Even if they don't necessarily vote for the same thing as you, or believe in the importance of the same issues as you. That doesn't disqualify their wants and needs: those are every bit as valid as yours.

So, please, stop acting and speaking as if your vote and your voice is the only one that matters. It's really quite simple: if there is a majority of people who believe something different from you, common decency and courtesy demands that you acknowledge it, and allow democracy to go on with its business.

Elections stipulate that there has to be a winner, but elections are (by design) not a ”winner takes all”. Losing an election doesn't mean you have been thrust into the clutches of dictatorship: we still have a tiered system of government based on checks-and-balances, and with plenty of regional and local representation as well – all of which has been put in place to make sure that the needs of all people are observed.

I can see how, with a polarizing and self-serving president like Trump, you would perhaps fear that every president is going to be like him: a new president disparaging, marginalizing and threatening you, just like Trump has done to so many others.

Let me assure you that this is not normal. This is not how politics should work. So please stop buying into and perpetuating that twisted distortion. Take a step back. Recognize the humanity in yourself. Recognize the humanity in others. Let go of your partisan hostility and media-fabricated "us vs. them" perspective.

Just because you might not get things your way today, doesn't mean you won't have an opportunity to change that in the future.

Because that is what civilization and democracy means: we collaborate. We don't need to compete.

We don't need to be enemies.

Mitch McConnell has joined in the blurring of reality that has become a Donald Trump hallmark.

”Let's not have any lectures (...) about how the president should immediately, cheerfully accept preliminary election results from the same characters who just spent four years refusing to accept the validity of the last election” he says.

While this may seem like a clever comeback, this is truly a case of apples and oranges.

There are a few important differences:

1. Hillary Clinton officially conceded defeat on November 9th 2016, having called to congratulate Trump the night before. Trump has yet to even acknowledge the election result.

2. The validity of the 2016 election was legitimately questioned, based on numerous intelligence reports and a joint conclusion by the US intelligence services that there HAD, in fact, been election interference by Russian operators, which later also led to several indictments. This case is not supported by rumors or innuendos but by hard, empirical facts established by actual court rulings. The only thing that was not conclusively proven was the Trump campaign's culpability, but that doesn't mean the election itself wasn't suspect. You have to conclude that if a foreign power actually interferes in an election, it is perfectly fair to question the validity of the results. By contrast, Trump has yet to offer up ANY proof for is allegations of voter fraud, let alone any substantiation from a credible source. He spreads rumors and makes sweeping accusations – In fact, he has made these allegations before, and has brought frivolous lawsuits that have already been thrown out: https://time.com/5908505/trump-lawsuits-biden-wins/

THAT is the reality, the verified reality that will go into the history books, whether McConnell chooses to acknowledge it or not. And the fact that the majority leader of the United States senate is so comfortable equating reality with fiction is highly problematic. The level of political gamesmanship has reached almost surreal levels, where political strategy now seems more akin to creative writing and the spinning of tall tales.

But McConnell obviously doesn't care about this. He only cares about appearances, and establishing the flimsiest of similarities, in order to blur the lines between truth and lies. It is quite a rhetorical sleight-of-hand, completely executed in bad faith and with blatantly dishonest intent.

As a side note, the impeachment of Donald Trump had nothing to do with his election. It had everything to do with well documented improprieties and violations of the president's oath of office, to which there were numerous witnesses, whereas there were none – zero – who were willing to testify to the opposite. The president wouldn't even testify in his own defense, and went out of his way to prevent others from testifying. A Republican majority dismissed the impeachment on a purely partisan basis in the Senate, in what amounted to an orchestrated cover-up. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/04/us/politics/president-trump-impeachment-inquiry.html

Having created this alternate reality, McConnell now continues to spin his intricate web of lies. Unless the Georgia runoff election, with two critical senate seats up for grabs, manages to turn McConnell into a minority leader, he will continue to ensnare the American public in the sticky threads of his false narrative.

Conservatives, let me extend an olive branch.

I know exactly how you feel.

Liberals felt the same way in 2016. We know how gut-wrenching it is to lose an election that you have invested so much hope in.

Now, engage with me in a thought experiment if you please:

Imagine if Joe Biden starts holding rallies where he riles up the audience with chants of "Lock him up! Lock him up!".

Imagine Joe Biden posting vicious tweets on a nightly basis, venomously disparaging every single Republican voter or public official or conservative demographic.

Imagine Joe Biden as his first major legislative effort banning Christians of specific nationalities from entering the US.

Then, imagine Joe Biden disparaging Republican-run states and cities as violent, crime-ridden shitholes, refusing to extend a helping hand to those places. Refusing to alleviate suffering from disasters like hurricanes and wildfires, while also refusing to help those places combat the effects of a global pandemic, on the grounds of the public officials in those places not sucking up to him.

Imagine Joe Biden dismissing protests in a city overrun with violent, armed, Stalinist fascists. Imagine Biden calling those Stalinist thugs ”very fine people”. Imagine him pooh-poohing a liberal activist running over a crowd of conservative protesters with his car.

Imagine Joe Biden expressing support for armed, fringe left-wing militias, who march into conservative state capitols to intimidate the local government.

Imagine Joe Biden disparaging a Republican governor when it's revealed that those same fringe left-wing militias were scheming to kidnap that governor.

Imagine Joe Biden coming out in support for a liberal vigilante, who traveled to another state in order to murder conservative protesters.

Imagine Joe Biden being impeached over his Burisma dealings, only to have Democrats try to thwart the inquiry and ultimately blocking its legal resolution, with Biden refusing to testify.

Imagine Joe Biden firing the chief of the FBI over this.

Imagine Joe Biden pardoning his convicted cronies, one of whom had engaged in witness intimidation.

Imagine Joe Biden paying off a pornstar with whom he had had an affair.

Imagine Joe Biden establishing exclusive country clubs all over the country, where liberal donors line up to pay him for his time and his attention, in return for political favors.

And then imagine, when you object to all this, liberals ridicule you and say ”fuck your feelings”.

Fuck. Your. Feelings.

Now, maybe you have a better idea what the past 4 years have been like for us liberals. Congratulations, you have experienced empathy.

If we promise you to try and not treat you with the same scorn and contempt that you have treated us, will you please simmer down and try to behave like human beings again?

Once again, Donald Trump stands in front of a podium and lies.

He claims to have knowledge no-one else possesses, yet he asserts that ”everybody knows this”, and ”people are saying”, and ”it’s the worst we have ever seen”. Who is it that has never seen what exactly, and why should we believe it? He never elucidates. He constantly paints in very vivid colors with a very broad brush – a wide-nozzled airbrush of deceit – and never worries about the consequences of his lying.

While it's extraordinary to have a presidential candidate make so many unsubstantiated and dramatic claims, especially during an ongoing election, this is not a new tactic for Trump. He is not unexpectedly stepping up to the mic to uncover some kind of new, earth-shattering revelation – he is just continuing with his everyday Twitter MO. He knows that he can create a faux reality in the minds of his supporters, because they have proven themselves largely incapable of critical thought; unable to question a single word he says. Despite his suggesting so very many things, and having said so very much, without ever offering solid proof of much of anything.

WaPo has been cataloguing Trump's staggeringly numerous lies, and while his supporters reflexively (and lazily) dismiss this as ”liberal bias” and ”fake news”, you will note that nobody has ever tried to counter all these supposedly ”fabricated” fact checks with opposing truths. One has to assume it is because people know that Trump lies, and they don't really care enough to even try to maintain a façade of credibility.

Trump operates by exaggerations and innuendo: he suggests things, and if people believe him, he moves forward as if it were true. If he claims this is ”the greatest economy ever seen”, it becomes the accepted truth inside the Trump bubble, even if it is actually false (the economy was objectively doing better under both Eisenhower, Johnson and Clinton). Should he get called out on any of his falsehoods, he denies ever having made those claims, whines that people are being ”mean” to him, and argues that the coverage he gets is ”unfair”, very much like a misbehaving child.

But the thing is: he himself creates this coverage, and quite deliberately so. More than that, he craves it. He longs for it. He alone is responsible for it. Trump is nothing if not a self-promotor, and he reflexively objects when his self-congratulatory bravado is called into question. He solicits scrutiny, because he repeatedly and compulsively says things without proving them, fibbing as he goes along. He wants his words parroted, and takes great pride not in being proven right, but in having instilled beliefs in people that they are seemingly unable to question. He unflinchingly creates his own reality.

This is a very peculiar pathology; one that you most definitely don't want in an elected official. Surely, nobody in their right mind would think that we should take a politician's word for anything, without examining or double-checking what they say? That seems like a necessity in any democracy, and yet both Trump and his supporters seem to suggest that such scrutiny should only be directed at his opponents.

Most people are able to admit, when push comes to shove, that they may have been wrong, or may have believed something that turned out to be untrue. Not Trump. It's all or nothing: either you believe every word he says, or you are being ”unfair”. It's clearly the twisted workings of a diseased, deeply narcissistic mind.

Sure, all politicians spin the truth to some degree, and often try to wriggle themselves out of accountability, but few (if any) have made the fabrication of unsubstantiated innuendos into an established way of communicating. At this point, whatever Trump says seems statistically more likely to not be true than the opposite.

It really makes you wonder if Trump is actually able to tell the truth, or able to distinguish it from what he wants to be true, should the truth turn out to not be in his favor.

I have never actually seen him do that.

I really think that all Trump would have had to do to win this election rather decisively, was to admit that maybe he was wrong about COVID, and acknowledge that maybe his instincts led him to try and minimize the pandemic, when people just needed for him to be straight with them.

He was unable to do that, and is probably not even capable of such self-scrutiny. For that reason, like a doomed character in a greek tragedy, he was destined to ultimately take his lying one step too far.

Given the rush to confirm the presumed new Supreme Court justice Amy Coney Barrett, the re-hashings and re-evaluations of many Supreme Court rulings of the past seem inevitable – not least the issue of marriage equality.

It seems to me, in order to refuse same-sex couples the right to marry, it would have to be proven that granting them that right would cause some form of harm to someone else. And conversely, you'd have to prove that NO harm is done to those whose rights would quite literally be taken away. In the former case, proving harm seems very difficult, and in the latter case, the harm seems very clear.

But legal minds are no doubt used to twisting themselves into pretzels in order to make the law mean what they want it to mean, while hiding behind the alibi of pretense that it is somehow is the literal, original intent of the founders. If there is anything the US Supreme Court (and entire judicial system for that matter) has proven, it is that there is no objectivity, and that all justices have an agenda, whether overt or not. There is ALWAYS an intent behind every interpretation, and you cannot NOT interpret something while making a ruling. And that means the law is basically always being reinterpreted, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.

If we're digging into semantics, the very concept of "intent" requires interpretation: the literal wording of a law or constitutional amendment does not unambiguously spell out its intent. The sentence whose meaning and intent cannot be misconstrued has not been written. Even originalists, it should be pointed out, are continuously applying their own reading of the original intent of the Constitution, since the authors are no longer here to clarify or reaffirm it, and they are doing so within an inevitably changing societal framework.

For the law to NOT recognize that change of context means the law itself takes on a different meaning, even while remaining unchanged; it is being redefined by the world changing around it. If you bestow upon people the right to bear arms, for instance, and originalists fail to adjust the meaning of the term "arms", it means the law in 1791 defined armed people as something entirely different than what that same law allows them to be today – from marksmen, hunters and possible civilian conscripts to potential enactors of mass destruction. The law cannot remain blind to this distinction.

Whom the law protects and whom it harms has to be renegotiated in the harsh neon light of the society we live in, not the lantern-lit, murky reality of the past. Harm is done to living human beings, and they cannot be adequately protected by laws written by people long gone, who surely could never have predicted what life would look like today.

This is what an authoritarian does: they relentlessly keep challenging the boundaries, to normalize the challenge, as if the boundaries are somehow up for debate. And then they move the goal posts, inch by inch.

Respecting the election? ”No, it's rigged.” Mail-in voting? ”No, I think we're going to have to invalidate that.” Election in November? ”No, I think we're going to have to move it.” Peaceful transition of power? ”No, we're not committing to that.”

And unless there is FIRM and absolute rejection of those fishing expeditions, with an underlying threat of dire consequences, goal posts are moved and norms and principles are trampled, before we've even realized it's happening.

The response to this constant probing for weaknesses in the system typically starts with denial. "He's not really going to do that, is he?" And then there's incredulity. "Surely he can't do that, can he?" And then there is regret. "Shit, he did it, what do we do now?". But the time to ask those questions is NOW.

Those whose whose responsibility it is to safeguard the election, the validation of the election results, and the implementation of the outcome, need to be identified, put on the spot and required to PLEDGE to do their jobs. Trump nixing a commitment does not mean we should accept it from any other public servant.

We'll deal with Trump's transgressions later.

Donald Trump has painted an image of himself as a patriot and supporter of the American people by wrapping himself in the flag and putting on a bigoted, nationalist show of bluster and pretense.

But it is eminently clear that Trump, in this regard as in so many others, is primarily looking out for himself, and is crafting a narrative strictly for his own benefit. To deny that Trump himself is a globalist, with corruption as the main tool in his profiteering toolbox, is to ignore a plethora of very evident facts:

• He's got investments in two dozen countries

• He's borrowed enormous amounts of money from Deutsche Bank (which has been under scrutiny for money laundering)

• He pays more taxes abroad than in the US

• He solicits investments and donations from wealthy elites in foreign countries on a daily basis, through the properties of which he has failed to properly divest (see below) – properties that have come to form an actual pipeline of bribery

• His companies have been awarded double-digit Chinese trademarks

• He leverages illegal immigrants as staff at Mar-a-Lago

• and... his MAGA hats are made in China

If this doesn't prove to you what kind of self-serving animal Trump is, and how disingenuous he is in his faux patriotism, there is this:

The New York Times just published an expose over Trump's multi-layered corruption scheme: a swamp of his very own making, which lays bare a very engineered eco system of corruption. A system of corruption on an industrialized scale.

The article lays out in sickening detail how Trump has turned the presidency into a cash cow: a direct pay-to-play funnel where the rich can buy influence, and the money goes straight into Trump's own pocket. The level of corruption is, if not surprising, rather mindboggling.

And through all of this, there is not one single thought spent on how to protect or improve the lives of ordinary Americans. A callous cynicism that allows Trump to end negotiations over economic relief for the many millions of people who are struggling under the weight of the COVID pandemic, and a blatant disregard for the suffering of hundreds of thousands whose entirely unnecessary deaths Trump cruelly dismisses with "it is what it is".

When all is said and done, there is only the sickening grift of a simple con-man whose first instinct in every situation is to figure out how he himself can benefit.

The fact that conservatives have not only looked the other way while this has been happening, but have been comfortable with and actually endorsing it, tells us with ample clarity that they believe this should be the new SOP of government: that we should instate institutionalized, legalized bribery, and that the presidency itself should be the very cashier at the check-out counter of this veritable supermarket of corruption.

This is a transactional, thoroughly immoral world where everything is for sale, including the integrity of our highest public office, and our very democracy itself.

To ignore this very crisp and clear picture of self-serving corruption no longer amounts to just being ignorant of it. It is to be a willing participant in it. To be endorsing it.

It's not enough to simply vote this criminal out. He needs to go to jail for a VERY long time. The stain of corruption he has smeared on the presidency may never wash out.

Caution equals weakness to Trump. He's a caveman who believes that in order to lead, you have to be strong and manly, not hesitate, not show weakness, never take criticism, always strike back.

The echo of Mussolini is palpable. Using strength as a panacea for all the world's ailments is, at the very heart of it, a fascist's approach to problem solving.

To Trump, facing problems equals not acknowledging them. And his cult of personality have bought into this crudeness, this primitive machismo. They love him for it. They believe they're ”owning the libs” this way. It's the fear and hate of weakness overtaking sanity and reason.

Following Trump's election, Trump's advisor Sebastian Gorka said: ”The era of the pajama boy is over and the alpha males are back”. Which, of course, is utterly childish – the bluster of an emotionally stunted man-toddler.

What we need from our leaders is empathy and intelligence and an ability to respond thoughtfully and appropriately to challenges, not just try to brute force our way through them.

The American political system has revealed itself to be much more fragile than I think most people expected. But that's what you get when everything is a "norm" that is subjected to constant negotiation and litigation, and the institutional "checks-and-balances" are politicized to such a degree that they fail to actually check or balance anything.

The US has always been favor of letting the market decide, as opposed to the government setting and enforcing firm, clear-cut rules. The Constitution is actually pretty light on detail compared to many other countries: it's just over 7,500 words (including the Amendments). Compare that with, for instance, the Swedish Constitution, which is over 2,300 pages.

Now we see the effects of that: in essence, the driver of the car letting go and screaming "Jesus take the wheel". There is nothing preventing the car from going in the ditch.

Turns out, firm rules are good to have when there's a chronic rule-breaker in the White House.

The death of Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has put the issue of the balance of the court – indeed, the very notion of a government founded on the principle of checks-and-balances – on rather precarious footing.

To understand why, we must first look closer at the concept of "checks and balances".

Americans (even to some extent so-called "liberals", who by any other standard would be considered centrists) broadly tend stick to the belief that regulations are unwarranted intrusions into their liberties, and typically think that the market should prevail. Setting aside that this is tantamount to wishful thinking – a bit like letting go of the steering wheel at 100 Mph and shouting "Jesus take the wheel!" – it appears to be why even political mechanisms such as the cherished "checks-and-balances" have been put in place: so that there is always a negotiation of every decision (with the inevitably ensuing gridlock), instead of the elected government simply making the call.

However, leaving politics and government (partially) unregulated, and subjecting it to the aforementioned checks-and-balances as a replacement for actual laws, seemingly relying solely on ethical principles, has proven so flimsy that it has been incredibly easy for an unprincipled but experienced con artist like Donald Trump to run rough-shod over every constitutional norm.

That presidents should release their tax returns, to ensure that they are not financially beholden to anyone, is apparently just a recommendation and not a law, which has allowed a thoroughly corrupt tax cheat like Trump to figuratively get away with murder in that regard (putting a finer point on the fact that Trump did indeed say he could get away with literal murder on 5th Avenue).

He has also disregarded completely the rule that presidents are not allowed to profit financially from the presidency, and that they must divest of their financial interests in any commercial entities. The Secret Service just submitted accounting that showed exorbitant costs incurred for them to stay at Mar-a-Lago every time Trump is there – taxpayer money that goes straight into Trump's own pocket. This is so blatantly corrupt, it is hard to understand how it can even come close to being permissible. It is in principle no different to Krusty the Klown being president and using Kamp Krusty to host every state visit or government function, while charging even his own staff for the "pleasure".

Hence, I think we have established that checks-and-balances are not sufficient to prevent corruption, or even to ensure that government functions based on the principle "by the people, for the people". In fact, many of the checks and balances appear to have been put in place specifically to allow some wiggle room in accountability for those in power.

But let us return to the issue of the Supreme Court and its composition.

A Republican senate under Mitch McConnell argued in 2016, after the death of Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, that voters should be allowed to have a say in the filling of the vacancy, and therefore refused to even hold hearings of the candidate nominated by then president Obama: Merrick Garland. McConnell made this argument based on something referred to as the Thurmond Rule.

Basically, the rule (which is not so much a rule as a hypothesis) suggests that vacancies on the Supreme Court should not be filled in times when government is divided, but left to voters to decide in an upcoming election.

This article goes more into detail regarding the historic precedents of this situation. Admittedly, the article comes from the highly partisan National Review and therefore obviously supports McConnell's position, but it still makes some salient non-partisan points.

1. The article does acknowledge that the lame duck rule/Thurmond Rule is not an actual law but a "norm". And as such, it is subject to interpretation.

2. The article makes a rather flimsy case for why it's a norm, more specifically in citing three different precedents while excluding a fourth, an exception, on rather weak technical grounds (that decision makers were essentially trying to alleviate the workload of a backlogged Senate).

3. The article also hints at a moral democratic imperative: essentially that voters ought to be allowed to decide on Supreme Court vacancies in cases where government is divided. However, it only counts as a case of such division when the presidency and the Senate are held by differing parties. It makes no acknowledgement of the fact that the current Senate and House are bitterly divided on partisan grounds. conveniently forgetting the 2018 mid-term elections, which pretty decisively showed that voters want to reign in this president.

4. Also, in making the case for that moral norm – that voters should be allowed to decide when government itself cannot – the article tries to pretend that this is only about the composition of the court (which would be 6-3 in republicans' favor; hardly reflecting the distribution of voters and therefore not supporting the article's rationale anyway). This pretense is highly disingenuous. The issue of the court's composition is much more importantly about how a potential repeal of Roe vs. Wade would play out. I find very disturbing for anyone to suggest that voters should not have a say in that matter. Allowing the Supreme Court to get stacked in such a way as to pre-empt a vote on Roe vs. Wade seems to decide that case prematurely (which, of course, is exactly what republicans want). For voters to not have a say in what would amount to a rather critical decision on the autonomy of their own bodies seems highly morally questionable to me, regardless of where one comes down on the issue itself.

It seems pretty clear that republicans are arguing for an imbalanced Supreme Court precisely to be able to make a decision on Roe vs. Wade without voters having a say. And this circumvention of democracy would be enabled purely on the random basis of when a Supreme Court judge retires or dies, and who happens to be in power at that time. Remember that Barack Obama, a two-term president, only got to fill two Supreme Court vacancies, whereas Donald Trump is on track to seating three justices during only one term. It seems highly unlikely that this skewed outcome was desired by voters based on one single election.

Which basically means that the National Review article (and Mitch McConnell) makes the case for government by random chance, not "by the people, for the people". A government without any real checks or balances.

It seems to me, the crux of this construct can be found summarized in this quote by James Madison:

“In framing a government, which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty is this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.”

But if you turn this control into a negotiation, is there ever truly any real control? Especially if you give the Executive Branch as much leeway as it currently has, with virtually unchecked executive orders, a heavily politicized and unbalanced Supreme Court, the Attorney General a tool for the president to use as he wishes, and the Justice Department and large swaths of the entire judiciary serving at the behest of the president – not just ANY president, but this president in particular.

How, then, do these checks-and-balances amount to anything even resembling control?

We're watching as these checks and balances are failing, one after the other, which leads me to think the entire system must be questioned.

I´m going to break a pattern in this post and refrain from commenting. Instead, I´m simply going to post a quote from a recent interview with the president, Donald Trump, and ask that you reflect on the implications.

(From a Fox News interview on 9/12 2020)

”This guy was a violent criminal, and the U.S. Marshals killed him. And I'll tell you something—that's the way it has to be. There has to be retribution.”

Especially in election times, you always see people come out in favor of policies of various politicians, and we can all sometimes stretch credulity quite far in projecting the beneficial outcomes of those.

But for people to actually dispute things that a politician has been caught on camera saying (and committing to writing as well), not just once but scores of times, it really speaks to a cognitive dissonance that is quite perplexing.

When someone tells you in their own words who they are, what they value and what they want to do, you should believe them. If you don't, you are suffering from some kind of delusion.

I can't count the number of times I've been told to "just listen" to what Trump has to say, and to not believe the "fake news". As if there is some great, hidden truth in what he actually says. Problem is, Trump's speeches are very well documented, and listening to him speak makes my head hurt. I suspect it's actually damaging my brain.

The only advice people on the right should be giving liberals and independents, if they want to convince them to give Trump a chance, is to tell them to NOT listen to what he says.

Because what he actually says is part of the problem: it perfectly reflects him and his crude, vulgar, patently untruthful con-man persona.

The only way you can disregard this is if you actively ignore what he says 99% of the time.

I understand full well that the truth is a sliding scale, that all things in reality are different shades of gray, and that more or less all politicians lie at some point or other. But on that sliding scale, the best thing you can say about Trump is that he's a great self promotor and salesman. And on the opposite end of that sliding scale is that he's basically a used car salesman, who doesn't let a bit of dishonesty come between him and the sale.

And by "a bit", I mean LOTS. Like, the estimated 20,000 falsehoods he's told so far in his presidency – "a tsunami of untruths”, as WaPo put it.

According to fact checkers, he currently averages just under 24 lies per day. Problem is, his cult members believe that it's really the fact checkers who are lying. But they never bother disproving those fact checks.

That, too, should tell us something.

Trump is busy stoking the fears of what liberals will do to to society, and liberals are busy looking like they're proving him right.

All he needs to do is to continue stoking those fears while increasing the pressure on the necks of the poor and already disenfranchised, and the turmoil that it produces will help prove his point.

It's the conservative political perpetuum mobile and if Biden doesn't step up and address it, we're in for four more years of the same old Republican scaredy-cats setting the agenda. Southern senators foaming at the mouth while screaming to the Senate about the evil horrors of liberalism.

It's a very old story, but it used to be, they used external threats as fodder for this fear-mongering: communism, wars, terrorism, migrant caravans, etc. Now, they just point the finger at "liberal cities" and use some rhetorical sleight-of-hand to make peaceful protests and violent riots synonymous.

Meanwhile, conservative news outlets are busy lionizing a 17-year-old vigilante and multiple murderer as a national hero. You see, murdering people is not scary if you make it seem like it's done to protect you.

Fear is a powerful motivator. Biden needs to get busy dispelling it.

Some people, predominantly on the right, are making the case that police were justified in shooting Jacob Blake in the back. Just like many of them have argued that police were justified in killing George Floyd, Tamir Rice, Breonna Taylor, Philando Castile, Eric Garner. The list goes on, but the justifications are usually the same, and they always depend on painting a negative picture of the victim, while absolving the police of guilt.

But in calling it a "valid shoot" (a term I have seen used many times), they are making a judgment. Is it really fair of anyone to make that judgment, not having been there, not knowing all the facts?

The Kenosha event may have cost one human being his life (still tbd); he is paralyzed for life. Should WE be making the judgment that this was justified?

I think THAT is the point protesters are really making - not whether the shooting was justified or not, but that it's not our place to make that judgment. That this not how or when justice should be meted out.

And, in fact, it is not even REALLY the cops' job to make the judgment to take a life. It should be a very rare exception, if it happens at all, and the justification needs to be very carefully assessed, or it quickly becomes a very slippery slope.

Do cops need to defend themselves? Sure. But outside of pure self-defense situations, is it their job to judge and kill people? The point is: no, it is not. It is their job to apprehend potential violators of the law, so that they can be judged by a jury of their peers, to which we all have the right.

In addition, sentencing - the determination and issuing of punishment - is ALSO not the cops' job: it it the job of a judge. Rendering someone paralyzed for life by shooting them in the back would be a very cruel and inhumane punishment, EVEN if it was decided by a judge. And especially if we look at proportionality, that the crime is "scuffling with police". We all have the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty; that is how our justice system is meant to work; not to have cops invalidate that right at will.

THESE are the elements of injustice people are protesting: that these very basic elements of justice are suspended by police officers in the heat of the moment, and that it is done so unfairly and disporportionately against one part of the population.

THIS is what is troublesome to people: We should not have the police be judge, jury and executioner. It makes all of our lives more unsafe, and removes fundamental rights from us.

Justice should be blind. It should be fair. Shooting someone in the back for "scuffling with the police" is neither - EVEN if guilt can eventually be determined, in a court of law.

We cannot have cops wage war on the population. It is not right and it is not sustainable. It's not even fair to cops, who rely on our trust to do their jobs.

But these events are fundamentally eroding that trust, and we should all be worried about that.

Listen:

The saber-rattling and open-carry posturing of the 2nd Amendment folks was clearly never meant to protect YOU when YOUR rights were being infringed and trampled on by a tyrannical government. It's never been rooted in principle. It was always just about them and their rights: people wanting to be free to shoot anyone when they themselves feel threatened.

As for that whole BS about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness etc etc – look elsewhere for people who want to protect those lofty ideals. If it ain't about the gun owners themselves, they have no interest in standing up for anything. As far as any ideology whatsoever being involved, that ideology is selfishness more than anything.

The ingenious thing about that revered and fetishized US Constitution is that, much like the Bible, it's become like a mirror. It's the equivalent of the fairytale ”Mirror Mirror On The Wall”, spitting back what people want to hear, allowing them to continue believing what they already believe. Continue thinking that the Constitution was written explicitly for them and nobody else. If someone else asserts that the Constitution should apply equally to others, people clearly feel dubiously justified in rejecting it. And if it doesn't stand for any broadly and universally applicable principles, it's not actually worth very much, is it.

Bottom line: there is no "we" in the Constitution; it's clearly not the collective revolutionary manifesto of France's ”Liberté, égalité, fraternité”. There IS, however, a big fat ”I” in the middle of it:

It's the Const-I-tution.

And so, it would seem that the rugged individualism touted in the US of A boils down to simple chauvinism and egotism.

”I hold these truths to be self-evident, that I am created unique, that I am endowed by my Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are My Life, My Liberty and the pursuit of My Happiness.”

That the Declaration of Independence would have ever said anything materially truthful or binding about the equality of all men was quite obviously always massively hypocritical on the face of it, when the majority of the people who signed it were slave owners.

So, when a corrupt and utterly self-serving president is tearing the very society down to the studs, it shouldn't come as a huge surprise that there is very little in the form of a societal scaffolding left. There's barely a functioning justice system for one, when the president can go in and pardon convicted felons (his known accomplices) under the flimsy pretext that ”they were treated horribly”. Accomplices who, by the way, were convicted as part of investigations into possible crimes committed by the president himself.

It's all massively depressing and makes you despair for human nature. Can we really do no better than this, after millions of years of evolution?

There are currently a lot of objections to the supposed ”re-contextualization of history” in regards to the Confederate monuments that are being torn down, as if history can somehow be divorced from the passing of time and frozen in amber.

1. I would argue that ALL history is continuously re-contextualized. That is part of the passage of time; what actually makes history history. There IS no history without re-contextualization; that is in part what history means. We cannot continue to pickle and preserve what happened 150 years ago, for the simple reason that 150 years have passed. Things change. If they didn't, nothing would ever become history. And if we didn't recognize this change, we stop living in reality and begin living in a history reenactment bubble; a simulated historical Disneyland, where every trace of history that we encounter requires us to put on a different hat. We cannot preserve history as it was; it is not possible. Instead, we should focus not on what WAS, or fetishize it, but on what has CHANGED, and understand it. All history is continuous change; it has no value if we don't recognize the change.

2. Don't the Confederate monuments themselves represent a ”re-contextualization”? The Confederacy lost, but you would never know it by looking at these glorifying, shoddily executed pieces of pretense. They represent the ”fake news” of the time: expressions of political propaganda which denied the reality that the Confederacy engaged in an act of treason, and that they lost the Civil War. If we want to preserve these monuments in a truthful light, all the statues ought to be waving the white flag of surrender, not appear as the bombastic sculptural manifestations of victory that they were designed to be.

3. Exactly whose history is it that is supposedly ”re-contextualized” and apparently ought to instead be contextualized? Why is that history especially deserving of this consideration? Where is the context of slavery, where is the history of the slaves represented? Where are their monuments? Do their lives not also represent true history? If we preserve the monuments of these Confederate traitors and white supremacists, should we then not also preserve the history that preceded the Confederacy? The true history of African Americans before they were kidnapped and forced into slave labor? Why is is that THEIR history is not known and represented in this same very public way? The answer is quite obvious: because the Confederacy itself produced a ”re-contextualization” of the history of African Americans. In fact, history is ALWAYS re-contextualized by the victors and the survivors, EXCEPT curiously NOT in the case of the Confederacy. Their defeat has been obfuscated and wrapped in a lie that has allowed the South's wretched legacy to be covered up.

4. Monuments are instruments of propaganda, not tools to teach us about history. They are primarily intended to glorify people in power, not tell a true story. If we truly wish to learn from these monuments, they belong in a museum, where their context can actually be adequately presented, not on prime public property, where their placement in the urban landscape was always intended to produce not enlightenment, but misplaced awe and reverence.

I've been a mercenary.

I've marched to the beat of the drum, and followed the general's orders like a good soldier, even when the strategy seemed wrong to me.

I've been a hired gun.

I've sold my time and my talents to the highest bidder. I've tried to make my clients happy and conform to their wishes, even when I didn't agree with them.

I've been a good student.

I've studied hard and read up on what they told me to read, even when there were other things that interested me more.

I've been an obedient citizen.

I've paid my dues and done what society expected of me, even when I had needs of my own that went unfulfilled.

I've been a team player.

I've gone along with the consensus of the team, even when I wanted to break away from the pack and challenge the group-think.

I've been an immigrant.

I've displaced my life and tried to belong in a new place, even as the world caught fire and immigrants were being vilified, detained and deported.

I've been a cynic.

I've listened to the market and tried to give it what it wants, even when the market itself didn't know what that was.

I've been brand compliant.

I've traced the outlines and painted within the lines, even when I've felt the urge to crumple up the paper and throw it in the trash.

I've been a corporate stooge.

I've done my job, accepted the cards I was dealt and quietly cashed my paycheck, even when I believed I deserved empowerment and recognition.

I've been complicit and silent.

I have sat still in apathy and decided to not rock the boat, when I knew deep down the boat needed rocking.

All these things I have tried to be on someone else's behalf.

I'm not doing this anymore.

I'm done.

I have, both through my professional career and my many hobbies and interests, been exposed to the many facets of fandom virtually my entire life. Comics fandom, illustration fandom, gaming fandom, sci-fi fandom, movie fandom, pop music fandom - you name it.

I suppose that you could argue that my chosen career - graphic design - is an indirect result of my own alignment with and participation in fandom. In fact, I have at various times worked in comics publishing and game publishing, and nurtured dreams of continuing professionally down those paths, but deviated from them in some way through a sense of self-preservation.

The more I see of the typical behaviors and attitudes that are so prevalent in fandom, the more I despair and shake my head at the many underlying troubling psychological factors that seem to override the benevolent superficial appreciation of these various forms of expression. And I find it increasingly hard to ignore the destructive connection between fandom and toxic masculinity.

You see, fandom is dominated by fanboys (and yes, they are almost invariably male). Young fanboys, old fanboys, amateur fanboys, professional fanboys, collectors or mere aficionados, superficially observing or deeply entrenched fanboys. They're rarely very imposing figures physically, but that doesn't mean that their dominant male tendencies are any weaker. They still want to hump other fanboys into submission.

Here’s the thing: virtually all these fanboys – no matter how articulately they may justify their interests, how religiously and reverently they may place the objects of their fandom on pedestals, or how many notches they've carved into their fanboy belts – are characterized by an almost pathological desire to be Number One. The number one fan. The one who understands in a sea of ignorant dilettantes. A disturbing tendency to want to start tedious pissing contests, to assert that they alone are the ones who, through the anal retentive diligence of their obsessions, have earned the exclusive right to determine how the object of their swooning should be interpreted and appreciated. To be right where others are wrong. It almost doesn't matter what the subject matter is, or who the fanboy is. Orthodoxy is hardwired into these people, and they constantly and tragically over-compensate for what must surely be a very low self-esteem.

Take blues music, for instance. Aging fanboys will pile up increasingly restrictive, narrow-minded criteria defining their preferred genre, critically assess the reverence of other fanboys, and militantly judge whether their opinions are "correct".

Take sci-fi or fantasy fandom as another example. Possibly somewhat less aging fanboys will throw their encyclopedic knowledge of all the minutiae of their chosen appreciation at you, and judgmentally and ruthlessly assess whether you are worthy of their misguided respect.

Enough already.

You are not impressing anyone, and your belief that you alone know the subject of your appreciation better than anyone else is only excluding and disenfranchising others, which ultimately ends up hurting your cause. By all means, share your appreciation, but please acknowledge that we all have different paths to it.

And please don't start believing your hoarding of knowledge brings you into any kind of parity with your idols. This is delusional. Those whose work gets wrapped up in (or slimed by) fandom won't respect you as an equal just because you remember their professional history in greater detail than they do. If you have a twisted need for their recognition, please see a therapist and work out your daddy issues before going out in public.

Show respect for your chosen idols by acknowledging their talent with humility. The importance of their talent is not inflated by you policing their appreciation, or asserting your own importance in their shadow.

Mainstream Democrats don’t seem to have learned the lesson from 2016.

When they talk about ”stopping candidate X, Y or Z”, they disenfranchise part of their party’s voter base. It is clearly not a recipe for success. Democrats as a whole could be a lot smarter and more pragmatic about this entire election or, in fact, ANY election.

I'm not making the case for any specific candidate, but I am making the case for holding off on a narrative and a language that had demonstrably bad results in the last election. We can throw around all sorts of blame for that (and Democrats sure are good at that kind of self-flagellation), but blame is not going to win elections. You have to look to where there is energy and voter engagement, and try to harness it - not suppress that energy. That should really not be seen as a partisan statement.

After three primaries, one candidate has emerged as the current front runner. Tainting that front runner with repressive DNC party machination language that feeds into the whole ”establishment” narrative is a lot less defensible than one specific candidate trying to stoke his or her base. Neither behavior is good, but I never understood why Democrats are so afraid to embrace candidates that generate excitement. That fear ends up with ”safe” and boring party apparatchiks, which means the energy around the election will flatline. Again.

To be clear, I’m not saying (temporary) front runner status should grant a candidate anything. I’m just saying targeting ANY front runner at ANY time with repressive, fear-based language is harmful to voter confidence and engagement. Regardless of who the candidate is.

But Democrats (especially) seem to be awfully fond of over-thinking things and of self-censorship. ”Shouldn’t do this, shouldn’t do that”. Why not let the voters decide and try to listen with humility, instead of applying some kind of artificial political theory construct to tell voters what to do?

Yes, candidates need to be properly vetted, and voters need to do their due diligence, but I’m not talking about vetting. I’m talking about repressive language.

Vetting a candidate is questioning their policy proposals, which is perfectly legitimate and helps voters make an informed decision.

Saying a candidate needs to be ”stopped”, however, is repressive language that plays very poorly within the already limited democracy parameters of the American electoral system. It tells voters that their preferences are somehow undesirable.

Given all this, I’m not at all surprised that voters (across the spectrum) feel disenfranchised, or that voter participation is low.

Americans need to stop doing that.

Instead, American elections would be better served by driving positive energy around candidates, and surf on that energy. Whatever one might say about Bernie Sanders’ supporters, for instance, they do (among other things) have that energy, to a much larger degree that most of the other candidates. Yes, I do recognize that Sanders supporters specifically are a bit zealous and engage in conspiracy theories a little too wantonly, BUT there is no denying that Sanders has ALSO been able to build up considerable momentum for his candidacy (as was admittedly the case with Trump). Dems should learn how to tap into that energy, not try to suppress it.

We can feel however we want about the candidates themselves, or their supporters, but we shouldn't bring a toothpick to a knife fight. If energy is how the election is decided, then you better bring it, not try to extinguish it. When I look at let's say Amy Klobuchar or Joe Biden, I don't see that energy, and while I don't think that necessarily disqualifies them, it mystifies me why Dems would not want that energy for ALL their candidates.

If you pick a candidate with low excitement in the primaries, how is that candidate ever going to be able to crank up the heat in the general election...? I think momentum is the most powerful thing you can leverage. If you don't have it now, you probably won't have it later either.

Which brings us to the American electoral system:

Many would argue that the system inherently favors centrists who seek the middle ground, and work to “reach across the aisle”. But this assumes that the system is static (which is hardly going to excite anyone), and that the middle ground actually exists.

First of all, I would argue that the election of Trump disproves that ”middle ground” candidates are somehow guaranteed any form of predictable voter preference. The last time I checked, Jeb Bush was pretty decisively sent packing. And I would argue that the right's rejection of Obama, who was very much a moderate, adds to the argument that centrism is not an antidote for partisanship.

I would also argue that what Americans have is a binary (”cartel like”) political system, where its democracy is calibrated through a series of pendulum swings, not defined by a permanently fixed middle ground. The system is powered by inherently polarizing electoral mechanics, stoked by media sensationalism, thus making the pendulum swing.

Those pendulum swings have gotten increasingly wild, partially as a result of the recent recession (and associated economic insecurity), and partially as a result of voters reacting to a perceived lack of representation. This obviously tends to make voters dissatisfied, which in turn aggravates the pendulum swings further (hence, the rise of the Tea Party). But I also think that voter suppression, gerrymandering, purging of voter rolls and congressional obstructionism stokes the movement of the pendulum.

Furthermore, I would argue that most Americans are so far removed from the full spectrum of political ideas (due to the restrictive, aforementioned ”cartel” structure of the political system), and so accustomed to the narrow span between neo-con and neo-lib that constitutes their ”choice”, that terms like ”far left” or ”far right” don't actually align with anything real anymore. It's all full-blown lobbyist-driven capitalism with different colored sprinkles on top, featuring some limited (and increasingly privatized) socialist institutions, constantly underfunded as a result of ongoing dismissal and undermining of taxation (a.k.a. “Starving the Beast”).

The truth is that, where I'm from, Bernie Sanders would be a middle-of-the-road kind of guy. And to Hungarians, Turks, Italians or French people, most of American conservatives probably seem terribly vanilla: ”authoritarian light”. And yet, American voters and pundits get so worked up about the perceived differences between candidates that they seem to earnestly think the world is coming to an end if the "wrong" party wins.

And so, the pendulum keeps swinging. The wilder the swing in one direction, the more inevitable and predictable the counter-reaction. The question is: how does this system ever move forward?

It seems American politics are tied forever into an ideological perpetuum-mobile of side-swinging moves. Whatever one swing of the pendulum may have produced, it’s almost sure to be reversed when it comes back in the opposite direction.

Whatever we may call that, it doesn’t look like progress.

I've been thinking.

Why are the happiest people on Earth usually living in countries with a higher degree of socialist policies in their political mix?

Because humans are social creatures and sharing a social contract, where we all have a stake in the wellbeing of our society, feels meaningful. It creates a bond through shared burdens and responsibilities, but also shared benefits and wins.

Individualism, which is so cherished and revered in the US, can be great, but it can also create a disconnect and a sense of isolation.

In a well-publicized scientific experiment, rats were required to choose between social interaction with another rat or instant access to a drug. The animals consistently chose social interaction when given the choice. Such is the power of the social contract.

Is it then any wonder that the US, with its cultural insistence on self-reliance, leads the world in illegal drug use, and spends more on pharmaceuticals than any other high-income country? Is it so strange that people sometimes buckle under the pressure of the expectations of individual success?

Your billionaire fantasy of that gold plated toilet in your aspirational ivory tower isn't going to comfort you when things get tough. Material wealth doesn't mean anything if you don't have quality of life.

Sharing a social contract that affords you a better safety net can remove a lot of the worries that weigh you down when a capitalist society demands that you fend for yourself. It's not that hard to see why that would make people happier.

And it's not that hard to see why some individuals who are repeatedly told to fend for themselves (to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps"), but who struggle through life's many ups and downs, sometimes snap and go on a rampage - especially when the accumulated neuroses and disappointment in their individual failings can be so easily expressed through violence, and articulated so efficiently and aggressively through the substitute of a gun.

If Americans learned to lean on each other for support, perhaps our happiness ranking would start to climb. And perhaps that would also help cure the sickness that no doubt is the cause of so much violence.

Conservatives claimed that Obama was a divider. Liberals say the same about Trump. Republicans in Congress obstructed Obama's legislative ambitions at every turn (denying him a fully legitimate Supreme Court nomination), while Democrats of the House are fighting Trump on (arguably) constitutional grounds, asserting that he is abusing his power.

I think all this has ultimately happened for a similar reason: Obama's presidency represented the notion of a demographically changing, multicultural America, which many whites found threatening. And now, Trump is trying to homogenize America again, which requires marginalizing people of color. Different symptoms of the same rift.

You could argue that both these viewpoints are inherently divisive, but the problem is, the former perspective represents reality, while the latter represents regression and, possibly, repression, which is problematic.

I understand why especially conservative whites are (somewhat desperately) trying stave off and minimize this ongoing ethnic change, but those attempts are inevitably going to get increasingly destructive. Sanity and democracy demand that they get over this temper tantrum and let go of their ethnic bias. It does not lead to a happy ending - many societies of history can attest to that.

There is no way you can bleach the ethnic diversity from America's DNA. Please just make peace with it and let's move on.

Dear person who dismisses climate change in angry Facebook-posts.

Thank you for insisting that people “DO THE ACTUAL RESEARCH” (all-caps emphasis yours, and really, who wouldn’t want to emphasize that).

I am impressed that you have put in the time and effort to study decades of climate reports, oceanographic data, meteorology, weather station read-outs, drill-core carbon metrics, physics, chemistry etc. It gives me hope that serious people like yourself devote yourselves so earnestly to clarifying this complex matter for the rest of humanity.

If I may ask, just for the benefit of us lay people out there, would you be so kind as to describe your scientific methodology, and list the sources of your research? And who are the scientists whom you had peer-review your work?

Not that I doubt your findings, but I’m sure you’d agree that when it comes to the health of our planet and the survival of our species, we wouldn’t want to put our trust in dilettantes who spend a few hours (or maybe days) googling articles whose headlines align with their pre-existing beliefs.

We’d want to listen to scientifically astute, thorough and trustworthy people with decades of experience, who adhere to the rigours of the scientific process, who insist on basing conclusions on empirically verifiable facts, who openly subject themselves to the impartial analysis and critique of their peers, and whose results can therefore be relied on.

People like you?

Ever since the Mueller investigation concluded, there has been an almost feverish activity on the right to close the lid on any investigation of the sitting president, and declare him fully exonerated – despite the president’s continuing unwillingness to reveal all the facts. We must ask ourselves what the purpose is for all this obstruction, and what it means for our democracy.

I am really struggling to understand the cavalier attitude demonstrated towards what is surely a very grave matter (election interference by a foreign power), the rejection of the pretty obvious need to investigate it, as well as the rather flippant dismissal of the troubling results of that investigation.

(I'm especially struggling to understand this attitude when demonstrated in defense of a man like Donald Trump, who after all has a long, irrefutable and quite well documented history of legal action taken against him, and a consistent use of settlements to avoid formal court rulings. But we can leave that aside for now.)

Surely, we can at least agree that foreign interference in US elections is a matter that warrants investigation – especially if there’s risk of it happening again? And if our intelligence services jointly warn against such interference, and supply what looks like pretty robust evidence for it, on what grounds do we feel comfortable dismissing that warning? Do we suddenly feel at liberty to subjectively ignore intelligence, especially if by a decidedly partisan and divided Congress? If so, on whose authority do we ignore the intelligence, and to what end? It seems to me, such behavior puts us on dangerously slippery ground.

Furthermore, if we have established that there WAS interference, doesn't it follow that this compromises the integrity of the election results? That this in fact means we have a president who is serving at the affordance of a foreign power? And if interference can be proven and should be investigated, wouldn't it seem entirely inappropriate to allow those who possibly benefitted from that interference to determine whether the matter should be investigated or not? That seems a bit like asking the main inheritance beneficiary following a possible murder to decide whether police should look into the circumstances surrounding the death. If a murder WAS indeed committed, how can we trust that the person who had the most to gain would not seek to cover his or her tracks, given their very obvious motive? To me, this hardly seems controversial; more like criminal investigation 101.

And if there is evidence to suggest that the beneficiaries of election interference (i.e. the winners of the election) might possibly have had what looks like inappropriate contacts with those who interfered, shouldn't that at least also be included in the investigation, as part of due diligence? Even more so if those beneficiaries also actually lied repeatedly about whether contacts actually occurred, and lied about the nature of the contacts? Sure, the contacts may turn out to be innocent, but given the seriousness of the matter, and the fact that there were clear efforts to deny and obstruct, it seems foolish to not at least add those contacts to the scope of the investigation. It's what should be done, regardless of who the suspect is, who investigates the matter, or on whose behalf it is done.

Now, if we can agree that these matters DO need to be investigated, there's the issue of deciding who should conduct the investigation. I think that, in the interest of impartiality and circumventing the inflamed polarization of Congress, it makes perfect sense to appoint an outside counsel. I understand full well that the manner in which this investigator is selected would be a sensitive issue that goes to credibility, but if a republican investigator is appointed by a republican Justice Department official, who was in turn appointed by a republican president, I think it's a bit of a stretch to call the investigation a partisan ”takedown” (unless we venture into Deep State conspiracy theory territory, and I feel it’s in every reasonable person’s interest to abstain from going there). Add to that the thoroughly documented integrity and capability of the man selected for the job – Robert Mueller – and I would argue that there is no reason to doubt the diligence or credibility of the investigation.

As for the results of the investigation itself (the report), that admittedly gets more complicated, but in the interest of peeling away the spin, I think it can at least be summarized in the following factual bullet points:

1. Russian (not Ukrainian) interference was uncovered and proven, subjects were named and charged with crimes.

2. Some criminal offenses committed by representatives of the Trump campaign (possibly unrelated to the election interference) were uncovered and proven and the subjects were charged, convicted and sentenced.

3. The suspicion of conspiracy with a foreign power to affect the election outcome could not be proven. However, see below.

4. The special counsel was explicitly not able to exonerate the president from charges of obstruction, and passed on responsibility for making a ”prosecutorial judgment” in this matter to Congress. Now, if there is indeed cause to suspect that the investigation may have been obstructed (blocked testimonies, witness tampering, withheld evidence, refusal to be interviewed etc), wouldn't it be reasonable to suspect that this affected the outcome of #3 above? The report states quite clearly that it could not based on available evidence establish that conspiracy had occurred. In my mind, that leaves a rather large question mark hanging over the final verdict. It certainly does not amount to anything coming close to a conclusive "exoneration", however much conservative spin sought to label it as such. In addition, having issues with this obstruction and its effects on the conclusions of the investigation doesn't seem particularly conspiratorial to me. If evidence WAS indeed withheld, it seems fully natural to wonder what that evidence is, and why it was not shared. If the president wanted a complete exoneration, why leave this question-mark out there? Should we even accept that a president, a public servant, refuses to tell the full truth, on the record?

5. Add to this the current Ukraine affair, where the president sent his own personal attorney as an unofficial hit man, to meddle in State Department business outside of regular channels, and where aid to Ukraine was discovered to have been officially withheld within minutes of the president implying on the phone that he would do just that, unless the Ukrainian president would promise to do him a favor. Sounds pretty much like textbook extortion to me, and certainly worthy of investigation. Then, this was followed by denials, blustery rhetoric and yet more obstruction, the president no doubt feeling empowered by his previous success, and a possible future whitewash in the Senate – meaning we may never have irrefutable documentation of the truth. Why obstruct in this fashion if the truth would actually exonerate the president? At the very least, I think it's fair to be suspicious of all this subterfuge, and I think it's also fair to be skeptical of those trying to label this suspicion as conspiratorial nonsense. It was, after all, well within the administration's powers to lay all the cards on the table. We should all wonder why they chose not to do so. It most certainly wasn't done in the interest of transparency, and the lack thereof does not serve this nation well in its pursuit of the truth – something I believe all public servants owe those who put them in office.

Now, whatever anyone may say about all this, it seems obvious to me that if we allow a president (or any other public office holder) to willfully obstruct, obscure, block witnesses, withhold evidence etc in order to impede investigations into possible crimes or abuses of power, we might as well give presidents (of any denomination) carte blanche to do whatever they want, because our ability to hold them accountable is entirely compromised. Is that really in our best interests as a nation? Was that really what the Founding Fathers intended when they sought to prevent the US from becoming that very thing from which it had fought to free itself?

Whatever we label that, I wouldn’t call it a democracy. As far as presidential powers go, this looks a lot more like a monarchy to me, where people in power can expect to go without scrutiny, and are afforded the freedom to abuse their power with impunity. How that doesn’t bother conservatives, I’ll never understand. They are, after all, republicans. Perhaps they have forgotten what that word means?

There will be other presidents after Trump. Would conservatives be willing to trust them equally with these unchecked powers – especially after Trump has taught future presidents precisely how much they can get away with?

If we allow presidents (and their hired goons) to operate in the dark, we cannot expect the will of the people to be observed.