As if there was ever any doubt.
This morning she texted the family, “Time magazine Person of the Year for 2020? I say it will be shared between Dr. Fauci and vaccine creators.”
I say Rudy Giuliani for his brilliant legal mind and tireless defense of free and fair elections.
I may get cancelled for writing this, but major props to Loretta J. Ross for asking, “What if instead of calling people out, we called them in?”
Because our politics is now a soulless, zero-sum game.
Before I decide, I’d like to know exactly how much time Trump and Biden spent in their respective labs.
The title of Steve Coll’s New Yorker piece.
“Typically, the best way to understand Trump’s actions is to ask what’s in it for him. Four more years in the White House would extend his immunity from New York prosecutors conducting active investigations into possible criminal activity, ease pressure from bank creditors, and further enrich his family businesses: a win-win-win. Assuming that the President fails to rig a second term, he is fashioning a story about how corrupt Democrats foiled his reëlection, which might galvanize followers and donors after he leaves office. According to the Post, the President told advisers last week, ‘I’m just going to run in 2024. I’m just going to run again.’ His campaign has formed a political-action committee, called Save America, which appears designed as a means for him to raise money to influence the Republican Party after his Presidency ends. The pac is eligible to receive funds now for Trump’s ‘election defense,’ but much of that money would likely be spent on other causes and candidates. Leave it to Trump to manufacture a constitutional crisis that also incorporates a fund-raising con.”
Plausible, but ultimately, just speculation. Why should anyone believe Coll has inside knowledge of Trump’s mindset? I suspect Trump’s mania is largely unexplainable.
Susan B. Glasser in The New Yorker
“On Thursday morning, when Governor Mike DeWine, Republican of Ohio, said on CNN, ‘Joe Biden is the President-elect,’ it was treated as breaking news. Merely acknowledging basic math, it seems, is now considered an act of political courage. More foreign leaders have so far acknowledged the outcome of the American election than Republican Party officials.”
John Gruber on a Mike Allen Axios story about President Trump telling friends he wants to start a digital media company to clobber Fox News and undermine the conservative-friendly network.
“There is not enough popcorn in the world if Trump goes to war against Fox News. Fox News’s undeniable success is built on a coalition of sane conservatives and wingnut kooks. Guess which half Trump might peel off.”
More likely, he ends up the guy in the senior citizens home who keeps telling everyone he’s the President.
Is all in on “Hopeful Healing”. And offers this critical insight, “I’ve never persuaded someone to change their mind about something that was important by telling them why they’re wrong and why I’m right.”
Democrats and Moderate Republicans are responding to a disappointingly close election in at least three different ways.
A) The “Perplexed Yet Respectful Resistance” response.
B) The “Angry, I Don’t Know Anyone Outside of New York City, Mindless Stereotype” response. Note that you can negatively stereotype by race, class, and gender and still be given a Nobel Prize.
C) The “Hopeful Healing” response.
I propose “D“, which is “Hopeful Healing” preceded by a six month-long moratorium on political discussion of any kind. We need a collective time-out. Eventually though, we need to start asking questions, listening to, and learning from people who think and vote differently than us.
Or maybe six years?
A condensed explanation of “American exceptionalism” from Wikipedia:
“American exceptionalism is an ideology that rests on the notion the country is inherently different from that of other nations, stemming from its emergence from the American Revolution, becoming what one political scientist called “the first new nation” and developing a uniquely American ideology, “Americanism”, based on liberty, equality before the law, individual responsibility, republicanism, representative democracy, and laissez-faire economics. It’s also the idea that America has a unique mission to transform the world. In his Gettysburg address, President Abraham Lincoln said Americans have a duty to ensure, “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Finally, it’s the idea that America’s history and its mission give it a superiority over other nations.”
Trump is a walking, talking refutation of American exceptionalism. At this stage in our nation’s history, how can anyone feel a sense of superiority?
Pressing Pause 