How about that. I remembered to say 2019 rather than 2018 in the headline. Maybe this whole new year thing is becoming that much easier to remember.
We spent New Year’s alone this year, as we did last year. We used to spend it with some neighbors of ours, watching the great ball go down in Times Square. But that doesn’t happen anymore because, I believe, they are Trump supporters. And because we are most definitely not, apparently that means we can’t be friends anymore. Honestly, I find that surprising. Once upon a time, whoever you supported in the political spectrum was simply one minor aspect of your personality. It was rarely if ever discussed (talking about politics was understood as a topic to avoid) and you could enjoy the company of others because there was so much you did have in common. That no longer seems to be the case, and that saddens me somewhat. It’s gotten progressively worse over the years, but Trump has brought it to the fore in a way none of his predecessors have. I’d be happy to remain friends with people who I’m politically opposed to, but have not been given that opportunity. Which is depressing as hëll.
Fortunately Trump is making it easier by working with the new Democratic House to ease the burdens of the hundreds of thousands of Federal workers who are sitting home staring at walls or working for no pay.
Kidding, obviously.
Trump purportedly spent the holidays alone in the White House while the rest of his family went elsewhere. This was the smartest thing they could have done, because who wouldn’t want to be anywhere except at Trump’s side during the most joyous time of the year that non-Jews experience. (Our New Years involve standing around for hours in synagogue, and then a week later we have to be depressed for hours in a synagogue. No wonder we discourage converts.). There the master deal maker, who condemned Obama during his shut down by stating that a real leader wouldn’t have let it happen in the first place, sat around and waited for someone to come to him with an offer. That’s it. Sat around and waited. He didn’t initiate negotiations, he didn’t order the Senate to skip their vacations, he didn’t apply any pressure. He just sat there like a recalcitrant toddler and waited for someone to give him his way, despite the fact that the Democrats had made their position clear: No wall. If the Mexicans wanted to pay for it (not to mention if all the people who owned land that the wall would have to be constructed upon wanted to donate it to the cause), then fine. Hëll, if Trump, the self-proclaimed billionaire wanted to pay for it, then fine. There is still no empirical evidence that warrants it: a study done in 2017 determined no connection between rising immigration and either drugs or alcoholism. But sure, build a wall that Mexico will pay for, just as Trump promised dozens of screaming crowds.
Which, of course, is not going to happen, just as any reasoning person said when he first made the “promise.” Would Mexico pay to build a wall around Trump? Very likely. But they aren’t going to pay for a US version of the Great Wall of China which, by the way, was repeatedly breached back in the day. To say nothing of the fact that many illegal immigrants are people who come in with visas and then simply don’t leave when the visa expires. Is he going to wall off JFK and LAX as well?
So the obvious thing to do is for the Senate to stand up to him. Nancy Pelosi and the House have done the exact right thing: they recreated a bill that the Senate GOP already passed and sent it to them to bring to Trump. If we had a government filled with people who actually understood and supported the constitution they’re sworn to protect, they would send it to Trump, who would likely veto it because Fox News and the far right tell him to. And then the Senate would override the veto, because that’s how the government is supposed to work. Balance of power with three equal branches.
Except Mitch McConnell and his cronies have forgotten that, if they ever knew it at all. All that determination they spouted to oppose Obama during his eight years has gone out the window. Instead they have simply become a subset, subordinate to the president and his desires, and will not send him something they know he will not sign. Through their inaction, they are tossing aside the entire notion of balance of power and instead catering to his whims.
And it was his whim to shut down a quarter of the government. You remember: when he was in the meeting with Pelosi and Schumer in which he flat out said he would shoulder all the responsibility. Of course, that was two weeks ago, and now he said this:
“The Shutdown is only because of the 2020 Presidential Election. The Democrats know they can’t win based on all of the achievements of “Trump,” so they are going all out on the desperately needed Wall and Border Security – and Presidential Harassment. For them, strictly politics!”
You know what? Let’s just say, for kicks, that he was right. Let’s say that “Trump,” the “president” of the “country” was correct and it was, rather than his personal responsibility as he said it would be, the Democrats practicing “strictly politics.”
Here’s the thing: they’re politicians. Of course they’re going to practice politics. Condemning them for doing their job is like condemning a lawyer for practicing law. Playing politics is how the government is intended to work. They don’t let their actions be guided by TV commentators or bloggers. They look for political advantage and try to accomplish their goals. If that’s “strictly politics,” then so be it.
It’s the Senate that’s not playing politics, letting the president take the lead and lacking the guts to stand up to him and oppose him the way they did Obama for eight years.
We need to remember something about Trump: he has a string of failed and bankrupt businesses behind him. He is not a good negotiator, deal maker, or businessman. And now he is bringing that exact same lack of skill to the presidency in a way that will ensure that, sooner or later, all the “closed” signs hanging outside Federal buildings are going to be replaced by “going out of business” signs.
PAD
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“I’d be happy to remain friends with people who I’m politically opposed to, but have not been given that opportunity.”
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I would as well. I have a few friends who differ with me significantly on some political issues and, while politics has always been a topic that could be prickly to discuss, I’ve enjoyed the occasional discussions of our different viewpoints. I like having my opinion challenged because defending it means I either get to reassure myself I have the right view, or acknowledge I can’t defend it and might have to change it.
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Alas, more and more these days it quickly devolves into trying to discuss facts with folks who will have none of it. I’m aware that claiming “you can’t have a rational discussion and the fault for that is ENTIRELY on their side” is exactly the same claim the other side will make. But in the current environment, I can’t help but conclude that is the case. It is the “other side” (Trump supporters and others of a “conservative” ilk) that refuse to be reasonable, acknowledge reality and/or recognize faults in the leaders of their side.
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It’s very hard to remain friends, however else you make have in common, with people who support a party and president who are so clearly not working in your interests (I’m was going to write “which is actively trying to harm if not kill you”, which they are, but am trying to steer clear of the incendiary phrasings that just inflame the discussion) and refuse to acknowledge even the most obvious and egregious examples of that.
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My neighbor may share my deep interest in comicbooks and PAD’s works and Asimov and astronomy and enjoy spending some evenings deeply immersed in a multiplayer video game and be as big a fan of all the things I’m a big fan of as I am. But if they also keep trying to burn down my house then, yeah, that one area of disagreement kinda kills the friendship.
Peter David: “To say nothing of the fact that many illegal immigrants are people who come in with visas and then simply don’t leave when the visa expires.”
Luigi Novi: Somewhere between 27 percent and 57 percent, in fact.
Sources:
* http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d0482.pdf
* http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2015/jul/29/marco-rubio/rubio-says-40-percent-illegal-immigrants-are-overs/
* http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/sep/08/jorge-ramos/ramos-40-undocumented-immigrants-come-air/
The exactly same thing is happening in Brazil, thanks to our also very deep right/left polarization and the rise of right-wing figures inspired by Trump. We also had a left-wing president impeached in a very weird manner some time ago, and reactions to THAT also split the country in half.
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I have tried to always stay civil and friendly to people, independently of political affiliation. So far, I have succeeded. Sometimes it’s a strain on both sides. I have felt that it’s not just that politics have become more polarized, it’s that the very NATURE of right-wingers has changed.
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They used to be more like Free Market folks with a stronger Christian bent, and there was still ample space for friendship. Now they have morphed into Nationalist Authoritarians who adopt a increasingly sharp us vs. them rhetoric. And I admit that the distrust isn’t all on their side. It’s hard to not feel a little fear when people start going down a road you’re afraid is the same one that led to plenty of Military Dictatorships and Police States.
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But so far, I feel that other interests are enough to offset this mutual unease. The folks I avoid are the ones I probably would not be friends in any case, regardless of politics (i.e. the real áššhølëš).
Rene – “We also had a left-wing president impeached in a very weird manner some time ago” If only that were the end of it.
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It was learned that said ex-presient oversaw the near ruin of Petrobras (Brasil’s huge oil company for those not familiar) with systemic corruption seeing more than a billion being siphoned off to friendly pockets during her tenure as company CEO.
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Then, her predecessor/mentor, ex-president Lula was thrown in jail for corruption/bribery and other good things.
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Now? Her successor and the chap who led the charge to have her impeached, Temer, is under police investigation for similar charges.
Meanwhile, the current, recently elected president, is ex-military who has publicly stated he missed the good old days of the military dictatorship. A time to worry.
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Fiancee is Brasilian citizen living in Sao Paulo and she keeps me apprised of the politics there from the inside and, honestly? It all makes US politics seem sane by comparison.
Yeah.
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My opinion on that is that you still need a batallion of Donald Trumps to go down the particular rabbit hole that is Brazilian politics. 🙂
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At least as far as corruption go. The good thing about Brazil is that we don’t get involved in wars and stuff, but the corruption is really widespread here.
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IMO, Lula and his left-wing party are guilty of corruption, but they’re small fry as compared to Temer and the right-wingers that are even more corrupt, and hypocritically used corruption as a pretext to get rid of Dilma Roussef, with the mainstream press as supporters, because they’re pro-Free Market.
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Dilma herself, the ex-President that got impeached, was pretty honest by Brazilian standards. What that means is that she looked the other way a lot, instead of lining her own pockets, as her opponents did. The real cause of her fall was a fragmented country in economic colapse.
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The corruption charges (however true) were a pretext.
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So we have two sides, corrupt left-wingers that claim they’re being scapegoating for the corruption problems and corrupt right-wingers that do not hesitate to pose as champions of morality and are hungering for even more austerity/free market policies as the ones implemented by Temer. IMO, the left-wingers are still the lesser evil.
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In the middle of all of that, came Bolsonaro, our own Brazilian Trump, with a fetish for military dictatorships. The guy that said he’d kill his son if he discovered said son was gay. The guy that said slavery was a myth and Africans came voluntarily to the Americas. The guy that said he wished to kill 20.000 people to really clean up the country of his political oponents. The guy that said he wanted to use extermination policies in slums.
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We are truly fûçkëd.
Rene – One thing about Bolsonaro – according to my little Brasilian sparrow, he’s reportedly in talks with the Israeli government about building desalination plants to deal with the country’s water shortage problem, something no other administration has ever acted upon, regardless of their election promises.
Yeah?
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I dunno. I strongly distrust the guy. He really reminds me of the first Brazilian President to be impeached – Fernando Collor in the 1990s.
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He is the guy that presents himself as a savior, as different from all the other politicians, the guy with unusual solutions to the country’s many problems. Fernando Collor was the same.
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I don’t buy it, but I really hope I’m wrong and that Bolsonaro proves himself a good President, despite his Trump-like propensity for incendiary remarks.
Rhetorical question: Why is Mitch McConnell refusing to let the Senate vote on bills that the President would veto anyway? After all, the Republicans have a majority in the Senate, right? They could just vote “no”.
I think there are several factors. (1) The Senate GOP are reluctant to have their individual names attached to a vote to keep the shutdown going. Some of them might get bitten in the ášš for it in 2020. (2) McConnell is afraid of defections. After all, the Senate unanimously passed one of the proposals before. I think McConnell fears that the GOP control of the Senate would be exposed as a fragile thing. And then (3) if the bill did pass in the Senate, McConnell could count on Trump attacking the “RINOs” who dared betray him, and McConnell, for not being able to control them.
It’s mostly the third one, I think and it comes down to one simple word: fear. They’re terrified to cross him. They’re worried that the subsequent flood of Twitter swipes and the condemnation by Fox & Friends, Breitbart and other right wing love areas will completely sink their reelection bids. It’s pure, stinking fear.
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PAD
The most astute political cartoon I saw was the one with the Tea Party depicted as a small rat pulling the Conservatives, the Conservatives pulling the elephant that is the Republican Party, and the Republican Party pulling the USA as a whole.
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Somehow, right-wingers have manage to get themselves into a system where the most radical elements pull the moderates and they all pull the whole country into a radical direction, despite being a comparatively small minority. I’m sure that with several issues, you couldn’t find more than 20% of people (if that much) that agree with them.
It was recently observed that McConnell has attained exactly what he always wanted. He doesn’t want to be president. Never did. He always wanted to be Senate Majority Leader. Everything he’s ever done makes sense when viewed through the filter of a thought process that begins and ends with: “What do I need to do to retain this position, the Republican majority in the Senate, and, thus, my power?”