All posts by Steve Stern

Can These People Be Real?

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At the request of the Vice Premier of China, Liu He, and due to the fact that the People’s Republic of China will be celebrating their 70th Anniversary….on October 1st, we have agreed, as a gesture of good will, to move the increased Tariffs on 250 Billion Dollars worth of goods (25% to 30%), from October 1st to October 15th. A pair of tweets from President Trump on the day he fired Bolten. (Or the day after Bolton quit if you prefer.)

When I first read the two Tweets – Tweet thread? – above, from President Trump, I was sort of dumbfounded. They? It just seems so wacky. How does the Chinese Vice Premier do that? email? Ask through the ambassador? Phone? “Good morning Mr. President. Say, since October 1st is our 70th, would you mind putting off increasing the tariffs for a couple of weeks? Thanks.” “Oh, sure. I had forgotten it was your birthday. How would two weeks work?” I can understand if the President put off the tariffs for a couple of weeks because China and the USA were working on a trade deal, but for a birthday? It seems to me that President Trump might have another strategy – besides keeping himself in the constant limelight – and that is to change the subject.

Whatever the reason, what most tickled me – in a slightly disturbing way – were some of the comments. Matthew J Show who bills himself as host of the MatthewJshow podcast, Tweets: Leadership when it counts! Well done President Trump! for example, or RD – which, apparently, stands for real defender – and is a Conservative / Sports Fan / Proudly Retweeted by POTUS says: Always a gentleman and a master negotiator our president is (RD is also a fan of Yoda’s syntax, I guess), or Adas whose tag says Adas has been professionally diagnosed with winning personality disorder™ – I love the trademark, BTW – and wears a green MAGA hat in her photo, Tweets: Shows the CCP who’s the BOSS in this relationship. President Trump is very NICE and he’ll let them take some time off! Back to losing after Oct 15th! One of the problems with Tweeting and texting for that matter is that it is hard to detect sarcasm and when I first read Adas’s Tweet, especially, I thought that this must be sarcastic, but when I went to her home page, I see that she Tweets things like how much Sweeden doesn’t like its healthcare system or The American flag has always been the international symbol of FREEDOM. Now, the US President is one too! so I don’t think she is being sarcastic.

That brings me back to my question, Can These People Be Real? Who are they? Was anybody ever that head over heels in love with Obama or is this a new phenomenon? And the answers are Yes, They are outwardly normal people, and Probably, but there does seem to be something in the Trumpian universe that promotes sycophantry. Maybe sycophantry comes naturally to the kind of people who like authoritarian leaders. Contrary to what we are taught from childhood on, everybody does not want our democracy. Some people just seem to like having a Dear Leader who holds unlimited power and is way above them. Somebody who is infallible and, if nothing else, authoritarians have to be infallible. I, personly, like my leaders to be common people who rose to power, that is why I like Ulysses S. Grant over Robert E. Lee – it does help that Grant was a much better, more innovative, tactician and strategist than Lee – and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez over George Bush, but that is just my preference. So, yeah, they are real but, the good news is that there are not as many of them as they would have you think, which reminds me of one of my favorite Grant stories.

After the second night at Goliad, Benjamin and I started to make the remainder of the journey alone. We reached Corpus Christi just in time to avoid “absence without leave.” We met no one not even an Indian–during the remainder of our journey, except at San Patricio. A new settlement had been started there in our absence of three weeks, induced possibly by the fact that there were houses already built, while the proximity of troops gave protection against the Indians. On the evening of the first day out from Goliad, we heard the most unearthly howling of wolves, directly in our front. The prairie grass was tall and we could not see the beasts, but the sound indicated that they were near. To my ear it appeared that there must have been enough of them to devour our party, horses and all, at a single meal. The part of Ohio that I hailed from was not thickly settled, but wolves had been driven out long before I left. Benjamin was from Indiana, still less populated, where the wolf yet roamed over the prairies. He understood the nature of the animal and the capacity of a few to make believe there was an unlimited number of them. He kept on towards the noise, unmoved. I followed in his trail, lacking moral courage to turn back and join our sick companion. I have no doubt that if Benjamin had proposed returning to Goliad, I would not only have “seconded the motion” but have suggested that it was very hard-hearted in us to leave Augur sick there in the first place; but Benjamin did not propose turning back. When he did speak it was to ask: “Grant, how many wolves do you think there are in that pack?” Knowing where he was from,and suspecting that he thought I would over-estimate the number, I determined to show my acquaintance with the animal by putting the estimate below what possibly could be correct, and answered: “Oh, about twenty,” very indifferently, and rode on.

In a minute we were close upon them, and before they saw us. There were just TWO of them. Seated upon their haunches, with their mouths close together, they had made all the noise we had been hearing for the past ten minutes. I have often thought of this incident since when I have heard the noise of a few disappointed politicians who had deserted their associates. There are always more of them before they are counted.

…he’s not misguided, he’s mean. On purpose.

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…he’s not misguided, he’s mean. On purpose. Karen Amy on Facebook

Sometime about ten years ago, at about ten at night, Michele and I were leaving San Francisco on our way home. We had just turned on to Fourth Street when a homeless guy walked across the street in front of us, walking at the slowest speed possible, seemingly with no purpose but to stop us. As we sat in the car watching him, Michele said: “Poor guy, he must really feel powerless; he’s not helping himself, all he is doing is making us wait…I guess that’s the point, that’s the only power he has.” I often get the same feeling when President Trump does something like change lightbulb standards back to incandescent (during the CNN special on the environment). It’s stupid and hurts the environment with no upside for him.

When Trump ran for office, he ran against both the Republican and Democratic Establishments and he pitched several policy positions rough ideas that I agreed with. Get out of Afganistan and Syria and use the money on infrastructure, acknowledge that North Korea exists, don’t sign the Pacific Trade Treaty, rationalize our relationship with China, or streighten out the immigration mess, for starters, but, he hasn’t done any of that. Instead, his Administration has governed – for lack of a better word – in a much more orthodox, if extream, Conservative Republican manner. But, using “his Administration has governed” and “orthodox” together in a sentence gives the wrong impression because Donald Trump’s way of governing is not orthodox. From announcing, even establishing, new policies at events that are nothing more than interactive, partisan rallies to making international diplomacy almost entirely personal, to Tweets like China just enacted a major stimulus plan. With all the Tariffs THEY are paying to the USA, Billions and Billions of Dollars, they need it! In the meantime, our Federal Reserve sits back and does NOTHING!, President Trump has become the constant center of everybody’s attention – including his – while spreading chaos. He is the most powerful man in the world and he often acts as if he has no power.

Huh? What? Really?

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“It would show great weakness if Israel allowed Rep. Omar and Rep.Tlaib to visit.” President Donald Trump

There are times when President Trump says something and my first thought is that it is a misprint, the quote above is one of those times. Don’t get me wrong, I can understand Isreal wanting to keep Representatives Omar and Talib away from the West Bank. Their trip would have included the – I hate to use this word but can’t think of any other – mainstream press and given world-wide exposure to the deplorable conditions that Isreal imposes on the Palestinian people. I can even understand why Trump wouldn’t want them to go to Israel and the West Bank (although it does just seemed like unnecessary assholery by the President). But, I can’t understand why that is not a much weaker position than saying Yeah, come on over and look around because a) we are proud of what we are doing and/or b) if you don’t like it, tough shit because we can do whatever we like.

All’s Well That Ends Well

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My heart is beating just like it should, and, through the residual haze of the anesthesia, I am thrilled. To make a long story short, when I got my ablation about a month ago, I still ended up with a slight heart flutter. The doctors put me on a drug, Sotalol, to slow my heart rate and, hopefully, get rid of the flutter. It didn’t, however, and I continued to be out of breath. My ablation doctor said that my heart is injured from the Ablation and, my words here, is fluttering from all the scaring done by the procedure – if three to four hours of fiddling in and around my heart can be called a procedure – and it often takes cardioversion to get in a regular rhythm. I had the cardioversion yesterday and now the doc says my heartbeat is normal with no irregularities. I hope it stays that way.

The Squad and Class

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A sanitation truck pulled up, the driver reached out his arm to give me a high-five. What that moment tells me is what we did was right. We are touching the hearts of working people. Democrats should be getting high-fives from sanitation truck drivers — that is what should be happening in America. Squad Member and U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,

Michele and I are still binge-watching Veronica Mars and I am surprised by how much of the plots and subplots revolve around Class. Class is not something that we are comfortable talking about in America which is one of the things that makes V. Mars so interesting. There are the 09ers – the area code for the right side of town is 90909 while the rest of town is 90908 – and everybody else and while there seems to be more of everybody else, the 09ers get most of the attention, just like in real life. In our national pantheon of virtues being poor is being almost invisible, almost at the bottom, right above being low-class. Both groups are to be either pitied or despised. Most people may walk by, say, a garbage man, and maybe think There but for the grace of God go I but nobody ever thinks, Owh, I wish I was them. They are looked down upon, maybe even looked down upon kindly but, when we look down on people, they are expected to look up to us.

As an aside, all my warning buzzers are going off – do not talk about race or class! Or politics for that matter – so I want to add a couple of mitigators, when I talk about our pantheon of virtues or say we, I know there are exceptions, and I’m trying to be one of them, still, we have stories that bind us as a culture, and money and class, as well as race and religion, drive lots of those stories, maybe most. That does not make the stories true, think of it more like a societal default position. Of course, because we are a good country, nobody is trapped at the bottom, the poor and low-class can get respect by climbing out of their poverty and class – in a socially conforming way like becoming a lawyer or, better yet, a doctor – and changing their sensibilities and taste to something more acceptable to the dominant culture which, coincidently, is us.

I think that deviating from the accepted political culture of Washington is one of the things that most pisses off Liberals about Trump but we often go after him for class and money. “He’s so low class.” or some derivative is a pretty common complaint, but, in reality, it is just used as a slur. Donald Trump obviously is not low class, not in the same way that Alexandria Ocasio Cortez is. Another popular slam is that the President is not really rich, he is just faking it which is why he won’t show us his taxes. My favorite slur is, People, say Trump acts like a rich man, but he doesn’t, he acts like what a poor person thinks a rich man is. Both class and money are used as ways of measuring the goodness of Trump because, in our culture, money and class are considered makers of a person’s value as a human being.

In the greater scheme of things, what people choose to wear may not seem important, but it is an outer representation of a person. It is who they are saying they are. Somewhat surprising, to me, what The Squad chooses to wear is that one of the things that I most admire about them. These four women of color, are comfortable with who they are and the way they look, they are not trying to fit in by dressing like a generic Congressperson, they are trying to stand out by continuing to dress like their constituents. After her swearing-in, OC tweeted Lip+hoops were inspired by Sonia Sotomayor, who was advised to wear neutral-colored nail polish to her confirmation hearings to avoid scrutiny. She kept her red. Next time someone tells Bronx girls to take off their hoops, they can just say they’re dressing like a Congresswoman. In her victory speech, Ayanna Presley asked: “Is your appeal broad enough? Are you playing identity politics? Can a congresswoman wear her hair in braids, rock a black leather jacket and a bold red lip?” and answered in the affirmative by wearing exactly that. A little more than a week ago, after one of her numerous threats, Ilhan Omar Tweeted I am where I belong, at the people’s house and you’re just gonna have to deal! over a picture of her wearing a long black dress and hijab.

I remember having a conversation about the patriarchy and rights with Courtney Gonzalas maybe, five years ago, she said something like “They didn’t give me the right to marry, I already have that right as a Human Being”. These are avowed low-class women are saying the same thing, saying “We are as good as you, we have the same right as humans that you do, and that includes being in Congress”.