Dear Democrats, WAKE UP

Trump won the election because enough middle class people were fed up with the powers that be. They knew government did not work for them. They knew the economy did not work for them. So they threw out traditional republicans, they threw out traditional democrats, and they got behind a maverick. If Hillary Clinton's team had not locked up the democratic machine, the maverick could easily have been Bernie Sanders. He probably would have beaten Trump. 

Sure Trump is a panderer. Sure Trump appeals to racists. Sure Trump feeds off people's meanest instincts....blame the son of a bitch who looks different from me for my misfortune. But there aren't enough blatant racists in America to elect Trump. He won because a lot of people got tired of being screwed by the government and wanted someone to pay attention to them.

While there appears to be no buyers remorse among Trump's core supporters, the swing voters on the other hand, the voters who decide elections, are hopefully regretting their frustration in the voter's booth in November, 2016.

Trump is a terrible leader. He does not think deeply. He is not terribly curious about anything that does not profit his business. If you think his business has become America, you're dreaming. He does not care deeply about anyone except himself, his family, and his businesses. I'm sure he's paying attention to the profits at his golf courses. And of course he is paying close attention to his image. His image is his core business.

Speaking of image, the democratic party at one time was widely promoted as the party of the people, the party of the working man (not so much woman, but that's another discussion). And then the democratic party screwed the middle class tradesman, the middle class factory worker. The democratic party sided with big business when it came time to look at overseas markets. The party claimed it would still fight for workers in America, but that was an empty promise. Of course business can make things cheaper in Taiwan, and India, and China, and South Korea, and Mexico. And of course business can then sell those products more cheaply at home. But what happens to the thousands of workers with no jobs. What happens to the thousands who do find jobs, but with much lower wages. The cheaper products don't mean much to these thousands of workers. Cars may cost $5,000 less, but their wages were cut by tens of thousands of dollars. 

We will never get those factory jobs back. Those of us in the service economy, those of us in the white collar world, those of us with savings in the stock market, we're doing fine.But we have a bucket load of neighbors who will never recover from the democratic party's NAFTA screw up.

If the party had been honest, it might have fared better. If the party had said, we know jobs will disappear, but we will create programs that help you find new jobs, maybe then the party would not have been spurned. When the party saw that new jobs were not being created, that the federal government was not pushing infrastructure in any meaningful way, then the party should have screamed, we made a mistake, we screwed up and the poorest of us are paying for it dearly. Factories and unions helped the middle class in a huge way, and factories and unions have largely disappeared. The democrats were complicit, they assisted the forces that destroyed our factories and unions. The democrats won't admit that, but it's oh so true. It took a socialist, Bernie Sanders, to own up to the democrat's failure. No wonder the party elite hated him. The emperor does not like to be labelled shoddy, even if his clothes are in tatters. 

True conservatives want the government to stay the hell out of their lives. I don't agree with them, but I definitely respect them. They are tough, and they aren't asking for any handouts.

Most of us, however, do value government services: fire, police, education, (subsidized) health care, libraries, streets, bridges, parks, a robust legal system, etc. And many of us get by quite well with those services coupled with our own employment. Sadly, however, many, many of us don't have decent enough employment to couple with the existing government services.

The democrats should stop talking about trade and the world economy and simply talk about decent paying jobs.

Our capitalist system is great at creating superior products, but it's not so great at creating meaningful full employment. Don't get me wrong. We're not bad at creating jobs. We're simply not great at it. And the sad thing is that with a little imagination, with a little daring, we could fix that capitalistic short coming. 

What's the real problem? What makes us cringe when we read the paper or listen to the news? It's pretty simple. America has millions of people who cannot make enough money to pay for food, housing, education, and health care. They are coming up short. Every week. Every month. Every year. Their kids are hungry, they live in beat up housing or no housing, they get a lousy education, and they become lousy citizens. It's a pretty vicious cycle.

We can solve this problem. There are various possibilities.

One example is being implemented in Germany today. The Germans are spending five billion dollars on trades schools that train their young people for gainful employment.

Another example might be a federal works program, structured along the lines of the armed services. You are owned by Uncle Sam, but you are also cared for .... food, housing, medical, school for the kids ... and your uncle can send you anywhere he wants. There is great pride among servicemen and women, which we ought to be able to translate to a federal works program. It could be the polar opposite of the post office or motor vehicle department.

I'm sure there are other possibilities. The point is that we must be having the conversation. We must be actively researching and solving why every family in America does not have a decent life.

How do we pay for it? The same way we paid for the Iraq war. Print money. Focus on the program and let's give the economy a chance to sort this out.

Speaking of money, it blows me away when people get away with saying that Medicare For All will cost the government too much money. We're already paying for our health care, way too much in fact. It's just coming out of our paychecks and our employers' budgets instead of our tax dollars. Take it out of our tax dollars and we'll end up paying LESS. How you ask? It's not difficult to figure out. Instead of dealing with forms from dozens of insurance companies, we'll deal with forms from one company, the government. Instead of factoring in insurance company profit to the bill, we will cut that piece out of the program completely. So less bureaucracy and less profit. Cheaper health costs. 

Cheaper for most of us....not for the extremely wealthy, because their taxes are going to go up. I'm not really sad. If a man is making twenty million dollars and you reduce is income to ten million dollars with taxes, is he really suffering? He made ten million in one year, more than most of us make in a life time. I think he's doing OK.

We are the strongest economy in the world. Some will say we got there by being tough. The weak struggled and the strong survived. That's a myth. Until we had a strong middle class, brought about largely through FDR's programs during and after World War II, our nation endured multiple boom and bust cycles, huge recessions that crippled all but the very wealthy. As a nation, we weren't very strong during those troughs. (If true strength is evidenced by how we treat the least among us, we were ashamedly weak.) But following World War II, our leaders and legislators created some amazing programs for the middle class. Education increased. Jobs appeared. Salaries grew. Home ownership increased. 

Not for everyone. People of color kept getting the shaft, just as they did in The Constitution, and women had to fight pretty fiercely just to get into a law school, much less get hired by a law firm. Minorities and women are still marginalized, but the good news is that it's not much of secret anymore. Their inequality is in our face every day, and that's a very good thing.

Good for them and bad for us (white men), you say? Actually no. It's a good thing for all of us. The amazing thing about equality is that when it's spread around, we help each other, we teach each other, we find that we all have different talents and together we are stronger than we were alone. So my last big issue is education. Make it good. Fund it federally and implement it locally. Send the federal tax dollars to the cities and towns and let their school committees battle with the curriculum. Will some towns do a lousy job? Sure. And people will move away to towns that do a better job. But we have to fund education for all, from day-care through college. Why? Because we will be a much richer society in the long run, if we are an educated citizenry.

Democrats, push the issues, not the labels. While it's true that I don't think I could ever marry a Republican, I don't think that's a good campaign slogan and it's not very compassionate either. What is compassionate, if a little corny is 

"You want a job? Uncle Sam wants you!"
"You want an education? Uncle Sam wants your brain!"
"You need a doctor? Uncle Sam needs a healthy citizen, so come tell him where it hurts!"

Democrats, run on the issues and these elections won't be close any more. The titans of power can gerrymander to hell and they will still lose.

I started this essay two years ago and just found my way back to it. I'm so elated to see literally ten's of thoughtful, serious candidates running for the President of the United States. And so many are not white men. Who would have thunk?!

Facebook....Another Weapon of Mass Destruction

Facebook is just the latest tool we have created that we can use to kill each other with. Kill is actually too kind. Massacre fits better. Facebook is actually genocidal. Ironic that a website with so many baby pictures and happy faces and people holding hands and hugging each other can also be as dangerous as the A-bomb. The atom bomb can wipe out a city with a single push of a button. And Facebook will allow a single fool to spew forth hate and vitriol, and watch it capture the dim-witted imaginations of his friends, watch it spread faster than a heat-sucking California wild fire, and in hours watch literally thousands of people whose religion or ethnicity or gender is of another kind, watch them succumb to the march of marauding machetes and exploding guns.

What to do? Ban facebook? Like we banned the bomb? The genie is out of the bottle. He won't be put back.

My wife keeps telling me you have to start with the young ones. Teach them to love each other's differences, teach them to cherish diversity and their own identity.

I wonder if we're too late. Are there too many old haters out there? Have they taught their children well? Will their youngsters hate as well as their parents have? Is there room for wiser children? Can those children prevail?

It probably doesn't matter who prevails. The journey's the thing. How we live it is pretty much all that matters.

Pretty unlikely that our species will last much longer. We're making it pretty unlikely that any species will last much longer on this earth. But there are other earths. Thank God!

A Note to the Democrats

I'm volunteering for the democrats this season, and they asked us to "share our personal story," explaining why we make the phone calls and pound the pavement.

What inspired you to get involved:

 There are giant inequities in our country. They come in many flavors: gender, racial, urban, rural, economic. I am involved because I can’t stand the inequities.

What issue is most important to you and why:

Equity is most important to me, equity in school, equity in jobs, equity in politics, equity in the market place, equity in the community. I’m not religious and I don’t go to church anymore, but I do value the precept, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It’s simply a decent way to live.

I am a proud Democrat because:

I’m not. I’m really not a proud Democrat. I’m a reluctant Democrat. The democrats are almost as complicit as the republicans in allowing our economic dichotomy to grow and fester. But democracy is all about compromise. Once I didn’t compromise. Instead I voted for Ralph Nader. That was an insane vote. If Ralph Nader had not run in 2000, it’s as certain as hypotheticals can be that Al Gore would have been our 43^rd President, and it’s again as certain as hypotheticals can be that we would never have had an Iraq War. Imagine, no Iraq War. Wow.

But even without the Iraq War, the inequities that are tearing us apart would be here. I’m a reluctant Democrat because today there are only two viable parties, the democrats and the republicans, and the democrats far more than the republicans believe government is not “the problem,” as a very white and privileged candidate once quipped, but rather democrats believe government should be a powerful, necessary, critically urgent solution to the multitude of inequities that come with capitalism and democracy.

Your Holiness, Act Like Jesus

Your Holiness,
The Church is consumed with reports of the sexual abuse of children by priests. The children were mostly boys, and the priests were certainly all men. As bad as the abuse was, what has galvanized the world's attention is the cover up of the abuse. Lately, even you have been accused of being part of the cover up.

Would you like the easy remedy? Apologize for the cover-up. Fire everybody guilty of cover-ups, stop condoning them, and apologize for coming to your senses so late.

Would you like to take this opportunity to make a real difference? Would you like to emulate Christ? Apologize for stigmatizing gays, lesbians, transgenders, bisexuals, and queers. LGTBQ people are as special and beautiful and human as heterosexual people. Any child can understand that differences are the very essence of life. There is no more reasonable explanation for devaluing someone based on sexual preference than there is based on hair color, leg length, skin color, or intellectual acuity.

The Church has sinned against gay people for millennia. It is no small irony that the Church has a much higher percentage of gay people in its family than exists in society as a whole. It's a bitter shame that these numbers translate to a large number of pedophiles in the Church.

It's ironic that you and your cardinals and priests, whose primary mission in life is to forgive us our sins, must figure out how to forgive your peers who are abusing children, while at the same time admonish and restrain them so the behavior stops.

That is not an easy task, but it can certainly be managed by a decent, upright man.

The hard task, the task that takes real balls, is to stop blaming LGTBQ people for the shameful behavior of some of our priests.

Your Holiness, don't act like just an honorable man, act like Jesus. Throw out the abuse, as He overturned the money tables, but love this world's rainbow of people, as He most assuredly does.

The Least Among Us Shine a Light

I got this note from Mazy....

"A friend shared a story I love about our mutual friend and mentor Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Jr. some years ago. It was Christmas Eve and the pews at New York City’s Riverside Church were packed. The Christmas pageant was underway and had come to the point at which the innkeeper was to turn away Mary and Joseph with the resounding line, “There’s no room at the inn!”

Never mind that no figure of the innkeeper actually appears in scripture. We’ve all imagined him delivering the message of “no room” to the baby Jesus’s parents. And it seemed the perfect part for Tim, an earnest youth of the congregation who had Down Syndrome. Only one line to remember: “There’s no room at the inn!” He had practiced it again and again with his parents and with the pageant director. He seemed to have mastered it.

So Tim stood at the altar, bathrobe costume firmly belted over his broad stomach, as Mary and Joseph made their way down the center aisle. They approached him, said their lines as rehearsed and waited for his reply. Tim’s parents, the pageant director, and the whole congregation almost leaned forward as if willing Tim to remember his line.

“There’s no room at the inn!” Tim boomed out, just as rehearsed. But then, as Mary and Joseph turned on cue to travel further, Tim suddenly yelled, “Wait!” They turned back startled, along with the congregation, and looked at Tim in surprise.

“You can stay at my house!” he called.

I am told William Coffin strode to the pulpit, said, “Amen,” and sat down. It was the best sermon he never preached."

A Nation of Minions and Monsters

Last month another gunman slaughtered twenty-six people in a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. I woke that morning to the awful news and all morning while I took care of my 13 month old granddaughter I day dreamed...of the grandparents whose grandchildren are never coming home again. No dream. This was true, gut wrenching true. So I dreamed on...how awful is the president of the NRA, how does he sleep at night, would I throw him in a cage if I could, would silencing him let children live?

And then I came to my senses. One person isn't that powerful, not in our cradle of democracy. One person does not have "one ring to rule them all...and in the darkness bind them." This is not Russia, China, or Saudi Arabia, much less Tolkien's Middle Earth. We are not a people of minions led by a Monster. Lately I feel as though we are being led by a minion. But my biggest disappointment is not the leader of our nation or the leader of the NRA or the white supremacist groups that are rearing their shaven heads. 

My biggest disappointment is the silent majority who have not yet lost a child or grandchild or sister or mother or dear friend to a leaden volley, who continue to elect legislators who will not pass serious gun laws. There are some who have lost family to gun violence and who still love the second amendment, and I respect them. I think they are nuts, but I respect their right to be nuts. But 75% of Americans do not own guns, and I am skeptical that even a quarter of these non-gun owners put a high premium on the right to bear automatic weapons. Yet there is no outcry against these weapons. Who is mad? The demented soul who fired the gun or the silent masses who have no problem selling him the gun?

No, silencing the head of the NRA, whoever the hell he is, will not cure the madness that afflicts us. We are a monstrous people, we are a land of monsters. We enslaved Africans, robbed Native Americans, imprisoned Asians, murdered countless people of color, worked factory folks to the bone until unions took hold, all in the name of supremacy, privilege (white of course), capitalism, survival of the fittest. And now we prefer to honor an archaic amendment rather than create an environment in which our children can grow up safely. We call the gunslingers insane, but we are the monsters.

Don Lemon on guns

Last Sunday another madman killed 26 people in church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. I was groping for words to discuss yet another mass shooting, the why, the how. I heard Don Lemon's remarks Monday night and I want to share them:

"Please pay attention. If you are doing something, I really want your attention this evening, and with an open mind. How many more times are we going to have to do this? Mourn with people we don't know, but meet under the most horrific circumstances, their loved ones' lives snuffed out in an instant for no good reason. How many times are we going to look up at the TV and see and hear people grieving, sobbing their hearts out in front of the world, for the whole world to see. And before you even know the full story, the responses from our leaders are sadly as familiar as the details of the shootings. Cases in point. 

Paul Ryan: 'Reports out of Texas are devastating. The people of Sutherland Springs need our parayers right now.' 
Vice President Pence: 'Karen and I send prayers to vctims and their families in Texas...' 
John Cornyn: 'Truly heartbreaking news in Sutherland Springs. Please say a prayer for First Baptist congregation, first responders and the community there.' 
Joe Manchin, who tried and failed to pass bipartisan anti-gun measures after the Sandy Hook massacre, said this: 'Gayle and I are heartbroken to learn of the shooting in Sutherland Springs, TX. Sending prayers from West Virginia.' 
Ted Cruz: 'Keeping all harmed in Sutherland Springs in our prayers and grateful for our brave first responders on the scene.' 

Thoughts and prayers, thoughts and prayers, thoughts and prayers. 

Don't get me wrong, prayers are important, they really are. But can we just be honest for a moment? 

This isn't about religion. It's not about politics. Democrats do it too. President Obama has responded similarly in other shootings...I'm not anti-thoughts-and-prayers, by any means. I grew up in the very religious deep South, a Baptist who went to a Catholic school where we prayed at least four times a day, plus mass on Fridays and church on Sundays, sometimes twice, so spare me the anti-religion tweats. You can keep them. I won't even read them. I don't care. 

These god fearing Christians were in church. They were already praying. Thoughts and prayer did not stop an oversight from the justice system, which enabled a guy who attacked his step-son and assaulted his wife, from getting a gun. 

Thoughts and prayers didn't stop a troubled person from buying assault grade weapons that took the lives of 26 people in an instant. 

And please don't get me wrong. This is not at all about the second amendment, or taking guns out of the hands of responsible gun owners. I am a firm believer in the second amendment. I'll say that again. I am a firm believer in the second amendment. I grew up with hunters, family members, friends, all around me, Louisiana, it's all about hunting. 

I also think responsible adults should be able to protect their homes, their property, and themselves.

But think about this: how many guns, and of what caliber, does one person need? Does a civilian really need an arsenal? Does a civilian really need body armour? Those are good questions that we should all be asking. Maybe you think they should [have an aresenal], but we should at least be asking those questions. Those are the questions our leaders should be debating. 

Our leaders should be leading, not following, not afraid to be honest with their constituents, even when it is unpopular...especially when, really, it is the constituents' lives that are at stake.

Leaders stand up to lobbyists.

Yes, thoughts and prayers are important, so tonight I hope you will join me in praying that our leaders will actually do something of substance and action this time, that precludes another thoughts-and-prayers moment.

Remember this: faith, without works, is dead.

Now let's begin."