I'm on a roll here...  We aren't approaching fascism, we have arrived.  We must object more strenuously.  We must call it what it is.  

Can we request the Hague to try Trump as an enemy of humanity?

by the way, if you go to the page, there are comments discussing the articles.  Some name-calling, but mostly actual discussion.  

Find it here:  https://eand.co/why-the-fascists-are-laughing-at-you-while-kids-die-in-camps-d1d468b602c 

--Kim

Why The Fascists Are Laughing At You (While Kids Die in Camps)

Americans Still Don't Know How to Fight Fascism. Will They Ever Learn It Simply Begins With Telling the Truth?

umair haque

Jun 24

I watched a startling video yesterday. Jake Tapper, the CNN anchor, questions the VP about how kids are being treated in America's camps. Pence's reply? To openly laugh at him. As if to mock. Taunt. Flaunt. Rub it in Jake's face just how powerless he is. Jake was left speechless for a moment. Maybe you would be too.

Think about that for a second. When asked if torture in concentration camps was fascism, one of the country's leaders replied with laughter. Hold on — that's exactly what didn't happen. And that's the point. Jake joins a chorus of powerful Americans who refuse to call what's happening in America what it is — from Chris Hayes to Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama. Camps where kids are concentrated aren't "detainment facilities." They're concentration camps. "Family separations" are an actual, real form of genocide. Putting kids in cages with little food, water, or medicine is torture. Hello? Where are our leaders? Out to lunch? Isn't silence complicity — and half-truth even more so?

(What kind of people build camps and put kids in them? The answer is obvious, isn't it? Fascists do. There are no other kind of people who do such things. Decent people don't. Accountants don't. Olympic athletes don't. The only word for people who put children in camps where they are tortured and genocided is…fascists.)

But nobody says these things. Nobody in power or leadership. And not enough of us, just average people, either. Enough to what, exactly?

Enough for the fascists not to laugh at you. And that is what they are doing right now. They are laughing at you, just like they laugh at Jake Tapper. They feed on your tears and feast on your pain and your despair.Perhaps that sounds melodramatic, or trite — so what? I'm not writing a novel. It is just simply true. The more that you suffer, the more you cry out in despair — the more that they laugh, revel in it, treasure it, delight in it, the better they feel about themselves. Just like any abuser.

Did you notice how when AOC finally told the truth, and said "concentration camps"…the fascists stopped chortling for a second, not giving a damn…and went on the defensive for once? How they huddled up, having given up ground? How they staggered and reeled back for a second, as if someone hit them with an uppercut to the nose? Nobody was laughing at her, were they? What does that example teach us?

You're probably upset and disturbed about it all — the camps, the torture, the genocide. I'd bet that, like many people I know, you've been brought to the brink of tears — or perhaps well past it. Here's a secret. That's good. It's worthy. But it is not enough. Enough to what? To fight fascism.

The fascists feed on your tears, on your torment, on your pain. They need them to feel worthy and whole and powerful. It is the thing they desire above all. They kill kids so they can feel strong and tough — inside, all they feel otherwise is emptiness. They feast on all those tears. Because from those things fear is made. And when they can frighten you, then they control you. Concentration camps and genocides aren't just for their victims — they are also for their bystanders: to show them, "we could do this to you, too. Fear us!"

So when you cry about those kids, those poor, battered, traumatized kids, it's good of you. It proves you are still a person of conscience. But it is not nearly enough. For the fascists not to laugh at you. To delight and revel in just those tears. Knowing that is precisely how they dominate and control and subjugate and defeat you. (That's what they did to Jake Tapper, isn't it? Laughed at him? He's one of the most powerful men in the country. Imagine how they feel about you. You are nothing at all to them — yet.)

Am I saying that crying over all this, wringing your hands, is bad? Of course not. It's natural. But it's not enough. It's what the bad guys want — just like every bad guy, from a bully to a tyrant. And you, my friend, must change that. But how? Through arms? Through violence? Of course not. The point is not to let it get to that point.

Didn't you read Orwell? Did you miss the lesson? Then why is it that you, like Jake, like Chris, like Ezra…like all of them…probably still refuse to call all this fascism…genocide…torture…and so forth. Why don't you use the lexicon of reality to describe what is happening before your eyes? Did you really learn nothing from Orwell? Why did Orwell teach us that reality was so important, anyways?

(Wait — why don't Americans get it, still? The reason is that they are taught to read 1984 as a condemnation of communism. But Orwell was a socialist. He might have despised communism — but he saw well how capitalism implodes into fascism, too. He wasn't the rugged individualist of American mythology, and the meaning of his masterpiece has been both diluted and twisted by American thinking. The point of 1984 was twofold: that when love dies, all goes with it, and "all" means every facet of human decency. Americans, however, aren't taught any of this — just that 1984 is about surveillance, maybe. So they haven't learned much from Orwell — not enough, it seems, to guide them through these difficult times.)

Orwell's message was this. That you must always, always, always call things what they are, and yet this simplest of tasks gets more difficult, to the point entire societies fail at it, the more horrific things get. It was echoed by Arendt, too. She described this tendency as the "banality of evil." Both talked about a similar process at work. A kind of willful, deliberate ignorance. A pretense that it can't happen here — even when it is. But crucially, not just by the bad guys. By the good people. The ones who can't permit themselves to admit that their society is capable of such horrors. Wouldn't they then be implicated too? Wouldn't the panic and dread be too great to bear? Ah, but the irony is that the denial and erasure of the reality of atrocity implicates them anyways.

I know. It's complex. It's subtle. It's not an easy point to grasp. That's the point. None of these thinkers — Orwell and Arendt are as simple as they are made out to be. Their messages are much deeper and more potent than we suppose.

But chief among those messages is that you must always, always, always call terrible things what they are, in the most precise and accurate way that you possibly can. This gets harder the more terrible things get — because atrocities push against the boundaries of sanity. They shatter the norms of polite conversation. They challenge us to wonder how they happened, and if we ourselves somehow aided them. They make us see our friends and neighbours anew — hey, is that person really as decent and good as I thought they were?

Yet that is the point. All those provocations, all those challenges, all those questions. And that is how we begin to fight fascism.

What really gives us the power to fight fascism? All that we have, my friends, is our sense of morality, humanity, decency. We fight fascism with moral power, social power, the power of our humanity. Or else the fascists defeat us, with our very own denial and willful ignorance. Truth, therefore, is the idea fascism fears most. Yes, really. Think about it with me.

Why else do you think the Nazis hid their atrocities from the world? Why do you think the American fascists try to hide theirs, stopping Senators and journalists and anyone from visiting the camps? Why else does the President lie pathologically? Because against a fascist, the most powerful weapon of all isn't a bullet or a bomb — it's just the simple, plain truth. When we tell the truth — as ugly and desperate and bitter and heartrending as it is — then we fight fascism. And only when we tell the truth.

Not a single human soul can bear the truth of what fascists do. Not even fascist ones. Why do you think the Nazis built gas chambers? Because even hardened SS soldiers couldn't bear killing Jews en masse. Why do you think "Arbeit Macht Frei" hung above the entrance to…concentration camps? Why do you think American fascists object so vociferously to being called fascists? Why don't Trumpists call them "camps", but "facilities"? Nobody wants to be a fascist — not even, especially not, fascists. They see themselves as persecuted heros, as triumphant and noble saviours, as the long oppressed pure and the true. The last thing they want to be thought of as is…fascists. Evil, stupid, corrupt, brutal, ignorant, selfish, malign.

So do you see how vital it is now to call all this out? When we say to a fascist, "you are a fascist", then the laughter stops. They get angry. They shout. They are hurt, at last. Now they are the ones on the defensive. They are on the back foot. They can't believe what you just said. They aren't bullying you anymore — they're too busy spluttering and objecting. And they also aren't killing kids for that moment. Now imagine days and months made of such moments. Are you getting my point?

So imagine that instead of gingerly, politely, tiptoeing around the issue, Jake Tapper simply said:

"My god man, you seem to me to be a fascist. Your administration is committing genocide!"

The VP might have replied: "Jake, don't be ridiculous. Get a grip!" — with just that chortle, that laugh.

Jake might then have read him the legal definition of genocide from the Rome Statute, saying, "but family separations are a literal form of genocide. We defined them that way because that is one thing the Nazis did, too. Do you understand what genocide is? This is very real. How do you answer that?"

The VP probably would have gotten flustered, angry, started shouting.

And then Jake might have said: "Excuse me. None of that answers the question. Are we now the kind of country that needs to try its leaders at the Hague?"

Bang!

And that, my friends, would have sent a chill down the spine of all the bad guys. Justice. The real thing. Paying for all these terrible acts. With hard time, with trials, with public infamy, with disgrace. They are scared of all those things. Why else is it that they constantly boast about how noble and strong and pure and just they are? Because what they are truly terrified of is being seen as weak, corrupt, evil, and unjust.

What the bad guys are really afraid of — as anyone would be — is paying for the things they are doing, whether with jail, disgrace, poverty, powerlessness, or all of them. But so far they apparently aren't doing anything at all that crosses the line — because not enough of us say "fascism", "concentration camps", "genocide", "torture" — so what is there to pay for, exactly? Nothing at all.

Do you see my point. Orwell and Arendt's ideas didn't exist in a vacuum, my friends. They formed the basis of what led to the International Criminal Court, and the idea of crimes against humanity. But we are ignoring that thread of history. When we refuse to call these terrible things what they are — of course the bad guys can get away with what they are not doing at all to begin with.

I don't want to lecture you. But the truth is this. You have a moral responsibility right now. A social responsibility, too. Yet from those very responsibilities come the very powers — the only powers — that can fight the fascists, too. Your responsibility is this: to call all this what it is, using the truest, sharpest, hardest words and concepts and ideas that you can. The ones that induce guilt, fear, dread, anxiety, panic, worry, and shame in the bad guys — instead of them terrorizing little kids, and horrifying you and me. You must threaten the bad guys right back with justice, with history, with morality, with decency, with humanity.

The answer to injustice is justice. The answer to inhumanity is humanity. The answer to immorality is morality. But that part is up to you. That part is up to you. You must speak the words. You must speak the words.Fascism, concentration camps, genocide, torture. Nobody — nobody, not even the bad guys — wants to be the people that do do these things. So why are you letting them get away with being the people who are not doing these things?

You can choose to be powerless, even if you are one of the most powerful men in the country, just like Jake Tapper. Impotent. Laughed at and mocked for all the world to see. Because you will not tell the truth, say the words, threaten the fascists right back with the horrific truth of themselves…even when they are sitting right before you. Or you can choose to reclaim your power, your moral and social power, your dignity, your courage, your purpose. Democracy and prosperity lie one way — tyranny and disgrace, the other.

Which choice will you make? So far, my friends, not enough of us are making the brave, wise, and worthy one. That is why the fascists are laughing at you, like you were nothing, no one, dirt on their shoe — while they kill kids in camps.

Umair
June 2019

ANS -- Why Trump Loves Dictators (Like a Child Loves a Daddy) How a Malignant Narcissistic Personality is Made, Why it Wants What it Can’t Have, and Why That Repels Us Instinctively

This is about the psychology of Trump, and why we are repelled by him.  the question he doesn't address, is why are so many Americans attracted rather than repelled?

Find it here:  https://eand.co/why-trump-loves-dictators-like-a-child-loves-a-daddy-46dc3c40937c 

--KIm

Why Trump Loves Dictators (Like a Child Loves a Daddy)

How a Malignant Narcissistic Personality is Made, Why it Wants What it Can't Have, and Why That Repels Us Instinctively

umair haque

Jun 30

I woke up today, and read the following headline. Donald Trump, Ivanka, Jared, and…Tucker Carlson…are in North Korea…shaking Kim Jong Un's hand. Perhaps, like me, you have to reread that. The bewildering absurdity of it, on so many levels. Trump alone shaking Kim's hand would have been one level of debasement. Trump and Ivanka, another. Trump, Ivanka, and Jared, a lower level still. But…Tucker Carlson? It's like the world's most hilarious satire. Except it's not.

What are we to make of an American President debasing himself before the world's last few genuine dictators? Whether it's Putin or Kim, after all, Trump seems to love nothing more than scraping and bowing before a tyrant. But why does that disgust us so? Why is that so dangerous for a democracy? Let's discuss it for a second — really delving into the tyrannical mind.

Here are the people that Trump thinks are enemies, of varying degrees. A free press is an "enemy of the people." Refugees and migrants are "enemies of the state", to be caged in camps, even if they're babies. But that's just the beginning. Canada, France, Germany — these countries are no longer our friends: they are something like our persecutors. Wait, what? Do you see what's going on here?

The mindset of a wannabe dictator this way: paranoid delusional narcissism, which regresses to an infantile state. That means that it's seeking the love it never had, but needed in childhood — and now it will destroy the whole universe around it to get it, or what element of it can be had, in the form of fear, power, and control.

Let's really think about all that for a second.

Little babies, just because they are from a different country, have the power to wreck and destroy the United States — the most powerful country not just on earth, but in history. Even ancient Rome didn't have the power to drone-bomb entire countries with impunity — but America does. Yet it's little babies who are the frightening monsters.

This isn't just paranoia — it's an extreme paranoia, the outer limits of paranoia. There isn't much that's more harmless in the universe than a human child. Even a little snake can bite you, sometimes. But a human child is defenseless, harmless, and vulnerable. To believe that they are monsters — with the power to annihilate history's most powerful armies and navies and air forces — is a form of paranoia so extreme it can only be called a delusion — something that's completely detached from reality, which contradicts any semblance of empirical truth.

But babies are hardly the only monsters in the mind of the paranoid delusional narcissist, the aspiring dictator, the Trumps of the world. So are our former friends. Germany and France and Canada. How did they become parties to be treated with suspicion, hostility, mistrust, and rage, exactly? Because they persecuted us. Meet the second element of the tyrannical mind — the persecution fantasy. Little Mexican kids are monsters to be feared, with annihilating powers, unclean, diseased (hence, they're not even given soap in the camps.) They don't persecute us — they infect us.

But Canada and France and Germany persecute us. To the mind of the narcissist, this feeling, persecution, means this: they don't recognize us for what we really are. The Best. Number One. The most special and wonderful people in all of history, period. Their worlds don't center around us. They don't adulate us and scrape before us. They don't dote on us the way we need them to. They don't give us what psychologists call our "narcissistic supply", in other words: the feeling that we are all that matters to them.

Of course, this is not persecution. This is just a mature relationship. Two people are friends — but they are not codependent clinging things. But for the narcissist — unless you are bowing and scraping and adoring and admiring — you are persecuting them. Because in their mind, they are…

And that brings me to the third kind of delusion in the tyrannical mind, the mind of the Trumps of the world. Delusions of grandeur. We toss this word around casually sometimes, but it has a precise meaning. Often, people who are seriously mentally ill — schizophrenics — will imagine that they are from royal "bloodlines" or houses, or that they are the offspring of billionaires, or hold the secrets to eternal life and so on. These are delusions of grandeur. But they are not the only kind.

Malignant narcissists — the personality type of every tyrant you will ever meet, or ever has been, from Trump to Stalin — all share these delusions of grandeur, too. They believe that they have a destiny, and it is not just a grand one, but a special, singular, often divine one. They are going to be all powerful, omnipotent. They are going to be the most feared and respected. They will be the strongest and most famous. And so on. A thousand year Reich!

Why do we make fun of the tacky taste of aspiring tyrants, or even real ones, whether Gadhafi or Trump? Why do they all share that tacky taste, anyways — cheap furniture, gilded to look expensive, amazingly gauche decor, fake gold everywhere, maybe even in the hair, bizarre costumes and uniforms, strangely twisted and contorted faces? It's not a coincidence — it's a giveaway of extreme delusions of grandeur.

Narcissists, aspiring tyrants, believe that they are something like kings and emperors. Only right that they should live surrounded in gold and marble. Unfortunately they're not usually educated or tasteful enough to know the real thing from the cheap imitation, which is why we end up laughing at them. But the delusion is the point. It's the root of the tyrannical mindset.

You can see the delusions of grandeur in a Trump everywhere. Doesn't he have the God-given right to take his daughter to the G20 summit? So there are Merkel and Lagarde and Macron…who don't know whether to be amused, horrified, or just plain bewildered…that Ivanka's popped up out of nowhere, casually talking to them like a (clueless) head of state. Then there was Megan Rapinoe, the soccer star, who turned down an invitation to the White House, only to be shouted at: she was "disrespectful." Caesar would have been proud.

Now that we really understand the tyrannical mind, let me come back to the question. Why is it so weirdly, unnervingly disgusting when an American President scrapes and bows before tyrants, seeking their approval and validation, just like a feeble little child? For exactly that reason.

It's not just that norms are shattered and whatnot. The American establishment has always loved a dictator. Pinochet, Saddam, Gadhafi — America created all these monsters. Why? To prop up capitalism, and repel "socialism." All these countries would have simply been gentle social democracies by now, without American intelligence agencies plotting coups, and American guns and bombs terrorizing those people. Yes, really.

The American establishment has always loved it a good dictator — as long as that dictator is their puppet. As long as he will terrorize the people they think don't matter. So what if a few thousand Chileans or Argentinians or Iraqis die? Those dirty, filthy people — do they really matter, anyways? If the price of doing business, of keeping the capitalist machine fed with oil, labour, raw materials, is a few thousand lives that don't matter anyways — then let's get to work propping up these dictators. Quick, call the CIA!

The difference here, though, is that this relationship has been turned on its head. It's not the dictator who's the puppet this time around. It's the American. The President, in fact. The way that Trump looks at Kim is like a lost child meeting a father figure, finally. With adoration, adulation, respect, genuine warmth. All the ways he doesn't look at democratically elected heads of state. When he smiles at Kim, he means it.

Trump is seeking the validation and respect and approval of dictators, over and over again, whether Putin or Kim. He needs it — not just for political reasons. But because that is what a malignant narcissist is. A boy who was never loved by a cold, distant, demanding, authoritarian father. And the tragedy is that he is simply repeating that pattern now, unconsciously — unable to stop it. He is seeking out the most vicious and brutal authoritarians he can — and seeking their approval, in the most childlike of ways. When he smiles at Kim, or laughs with Putin, it's not like two adults do. It's the smile and laugh of a child hoping desperately to be loved by a parent. Trump is still seeking the love of the dad he never got — and never will.

Because, quite obviously, these men don't love him. They don't love anything or anyone — they're not capable of it. They're using him. To what? To destroy, to ruin, to shatter. America, Europe, Asia global order, peace, stability, progress, prosperity.

And we, my friends, are all in the path of this tornado of psychological trauma.

Trump was made a malignant narcissist in the same way that such people are always made. Distant, cold, authoritarian parents failed to provide intimacy, safety, love. The child was constantly told he wasn't good enough, he was a failure, he was nobody. He therefore developed the mindset that only by being the center of the universe could he attain the one thing he needed most, love, intimacy, respect, relationship.

There he is, still trying. Trying so hard that even surrogate father figures have been found, to desperately provide the love the wounded child still needs.

Trump and Kim shaking hands doesn't unnerve us just because "two tyrants flock together." There is something much deeper going on here. It unnerves us so precisely because one of these men is clearly the father — and the other, the child, still seeking to be held, seen, and loved. This is not a relationship of equals, in other words.

That is why in these situations, we have a response that's different from seeing the tacky furniture, or the absurdly hilarious family photos. We don't just laugh. instinctively, we're repelled. But we're not just repelled because an American President is growing close to a dictator. They always have, my friends, from Reagan funding Saddam and Gadhafi and Pinochet, to now.

We are repelled because there on the global stage is a truly unbelievable, bizarre, tragic, gruesome, and ugly spectacle. A President who has become a little boy, desperately seeking validation, attention, and intimacy from…dictators. Just like a child does from a father. We watch a President literally regress to an infantile state. We get the sense that if Kim or Putin cooed, Trump would respond in baby talk, and smile a dreamy, dissociative smile.

We are disgusted and unnerved deep down, in our emotional centers, because this is something as staggering as it is strange. A man who is President becoming the boy he still is, seeking the love he never got, from an imaginary father, who is the authoritarian not just of a family, but of a country. We are seeing a mind break and shatter, revealing what is truly inside this human soul. Just a wounded child, screaming, abandoned, lost — one that never grew into manhood.

And will destroy the whole universe around it, just to be at the center of that very universe, for a moment, even if it is only orbited by wreckage, ruin, and dust. After all, what good is a universe if you aren't at its center?

That is why we're disgusted, shocked, and frightened, my friends. We are watching the truth of a broken human soul emerge. It is an ugly truth. The truth of trauma, abuse, neglect — and what they become. Playing out on the biggest of stages. A wounded man-child, desperately, hopelessly, seeking the love of an authoritarian father — that he will never have — even by tearing down the whole universe, after becoming its emperor. "Here is another father! Maybe this one will love me, at last," said a sad little boy.

Perhaps he will, little boy, perhaps he will.

Umair
 June 2019

ANS -- The Awesomeness of Elizabeth Warren -- What it Really Means to be The Best Among Us, in the Best Way

This one brought tears to my eyes.  Read it.  

It's about current politics, but it really isn't.  It's about the soul of America.  

Find it here:  https://eand.co/the-awesomeness-of-elizabeth-warren-93b81dab2a69 

--Kim

The Awesomeness of Elizabeth Warren

What it Really Means to be The Best Among Us, in the Best Way

umair haque

Jun 27

Here's a tiny question. What really qualifies a person for the job of a leading a society? Just credentials? Charm? Ideas? Or something more, something deeper?

Elizabeth Warren absolutely killed it at the Democratic debate last night, which was her first really big moment on the national stage. She didn't speak the most. But when she did, every word, every syllable landed like a hammer blow aimed squarely at the forces that have made America the world's first poor rich country — authoritarianism, patriarchy, runaway capitalism, a culture of cruelty, rampant inequality. Bang!

Forget all her plans and agendas for a moment. They're vital, they're awesome, they're crucial. America will never recover without them, or their equivalents — only keep declining. But where did they come from? What was the spark behind them? There is something truer still happening here. I thought about it for a while. I tried to put my finger on it. Here's what I came up with.

Elizabeth Warren is so good that it frightens me a little. Not just good "at", meaning high-IQ or "intelligent" or skilled or experienced and so on. But good. Courageous, brave, doesn't-give-a-damn what the bad guys think, fierce, passionate, unafraid, authentic. (Do you think it's funny and telling that when I said "good" you probably confused it for "good at"? Wait — isn't that the problem?)

She is not just one of the most "smart" or "brightest" people I have ever seen — though there's that, the Ivy League factor, if you like. But it's not worth a whole lot without something more fundamental. Call it what you will — but it's not "likeability" (read: being meek and timid for a woman) "intelligence" (read: being able to speak technical political jargon that men invented for men's sakes) or accomplishment (read: doing things that count in men's eyes.) It is something much, much deeper. That something deeper is there in her in spades, that something that counts in a much truer tally — and it shone last night. It is the something that matters the most, my friends. Goodness. Mettle, fiber, backbone, care. Character. a soul, humanity, decency.

There are many words for this elusive, ineffable quality — yet none really do it justice. So let me draw an analogy.

Sometimes I'm a little afraid of my partner. I don't do something I said I'd do. I say something stupid. I write something that's not so good (this one happens a lot) I forget to take the trash out. I veg out instead of getting off my ass and finishing that book, song, article, essay. Now, all this happens regularly. I'm not just only human — I'm a lazy, forgetful, ornery son of a gun. I'm a donkey pretending to be a dude.

Uh oh. It's time for some wrath. It's getting cloudy in heaven. Time for a little scolding, a challenge, a provocation, a reprimand, a reality check. I live in constant fear and anxiety and dread of it. But it's a kind of delicious fear. Nope. Not in a bad way. Threatening me, ridiculing me, mocking me. I'm not afraid of her like an abuser. I'm not scared of any kind of harm she'll inflict on me. I'm not afraid of "her" at all, really. I love her all the more for it — this fact that she frightens me, in a good way.

It's a subtle point I'm trying to make. Perhaps you see it — or maybe you don't yet.

I am afraid — terribly afraid, if I'm honest — of disappointing her. Of failing her. Of somehow not living up to her expectations and ideals of me, of us, of what I'm capable of…versus if I'm actually sitting on the sofa wallowing, lazing, or dozing. Now, I understand we live in a time where it's not trendy to express such thoughts. But I don't think anyone has ever had a genuine relationship without expectations and ideals. Sure, we fall short — but the question is: do we struggle upwards?

She is always challenging me to be my true self, my authentic self, to do the things that count most, to live up to my possibilities. It makes me afraid — in a good way. Can I do it today? In this way? Will she like this song, this chapter, this idea? Will she think it's trite, foolish, that I can do better? I'm afraid. I am engaged in the struggle to be my better self, always, thanks to this woman that I love. It's the most beautiful experience I have ever had.

The point of all that gushy sentimental claptrap is this. My partner challenges me to be my best self, always, every day. It scares me. It makes me anxious and stressed, sometimes — yet not in a bad way, in a positive, optimistic, life-affirming way. But what kind of person can challenge you to struggle to your best self? Not just a "smarter" one — they might well just take advantage of you. Only a genuinely good person — one much, much better than me, to begin with, can engage me in the struggle to become my best self.

And that, my friends, is how Warren makes me feel. (No, no, I'm not proposing to her.) I mean that she scares me a little since she makes afraid me of disappointing her — because she is challenging all of us to become to our better selves. She is a person of abundant character, in that sense. Go ahead and call it a terrible and hackneyed and cliched and even a sexist analogy if you like. Does any part of it ring true, though? How long has it been since a politician made you feel a little afraid of disappointing them — instead of them disappointing you?

Warren challenges each and every one of us to be our best selves. To create a country full of people constantly engaged in this beautiful and noble and impossible struggle to become our better selves. Let me make that concrete a little. The ones who give each other decent healthcare, retirement, education, transportation. The ones who genuinely care for one another again. All those things are necessary to become your best self, no?

But then what? Then do we all go compete to work for Wall St or Silicon Valley, so we can make our fuck-you money, and walk away from society, living in grand, stupid little islands of our own design? Nope. Then we can really begin to give. Then we lead. Even in small ways. Maybe we mentor, maybe we coach, maybe we volunteer, maybe we start up. Maybe we just aim to become teachers — like Warren did. Maybe those worthy aspirations take us to worthier places, still. That's part of her message, her perspective, her attitude, too, isn't it?

Do you see this strangle and subtle set of thoughts I'm trying — and probably failing — to express? Let me sharpen them.

Warren challenges each and every one of us to our best selves. Not just our technocratic selves, or our consumerist selves, or our ideological selves. Not our egos or our ids or our shadows. Not just little greedy appetites or angry children or babies throwing tantrums when they don't get their diapees changed (yes, I said diapees). Wait — isn't that what most politicians and pundits want? Isn't that how they divide us and tempt and control us? But Warren's genuinely not interested in any of that. She's fundamentally concerned with what I'd call the eudaemonic struggle — the beautiful, arduous, upwards climb towards the impossible peak of the better self.

She thinks every single life should start from the same place — and be able to climb as high it can. And that it should be caught, gently, if it falls, reassured, its tears brushed away — so it can climb again, again, again. (This line of thinking has deep roots in history — from Aristotle to the great prophets to European social democracy. Only we Americans seem to have neglected it, forgotten it, ignored it.)

Now. What does all that make her? Sure, she's smart. She's "intelligent" in that cold, abstract, Ivy League way — so what? Tons of people are — but they're still terrible people. Ah, that's the point. She's not. She's that rarest of things — not just one of them, the failed American elite, who look at the stock market booming, and declare everything ok, while the average American dies in debt, but one of us. Just average people with working souls.

(Please understand I'm not saying she's perfect, or flawless, and so on. I'm saying what I'm saying: she appears to be a good, decent, and humane person, in the expansive sense of empathetic, courageous, true, beyond being simply "intelligent". And those are the most crucial qualities of all. They're what we need most right now — maybe always. If you don't believe that, go ahead and take a look at the Oval Office, Wall St, Silicon Valley, K St.)

It's not the impersonal analytical qualities we should value in a Warren. It's character. It's goodness. It's that sense of uncompromising defiance. It's the soul power, stupid. The humanity. The decency. The wisdom. Because without those things, all the "analytical skills" in the world aren't worth a damn. Just take a look at an Ezra Klein. Nice guy. He's been wrong about every single thing in recent American history, from the rise of Trumpism, to the rise of camps — not because he's dumb, but because he lacks a soul, and without a working set of values to guide your "analytical choices", you will more or less always get them wrong, because you don't know if a concentration camp is just another "policy choice."

Warren is the best among us in the best way, my friends. She is a decent human being. Now, you might think that's nothing at all. But my friends, there is nothing harder in indecent and obscene times — which is what these are — than to remain decent. To grow in decency, in fact. She used to be a die-hard Republican. But seeing the misery and destruction those ideas wreaked — guess what — she changed her mind 180 degrees. How many other leaders do you know who have done that? I can't think of a single one.

She is not just the best among us in some kind of cold, abstract way. That was Obama. The professor who couldn't fight — except to bomb villages with drones — but definitely not the Republicans. The wise man who tried to fix healthcare with…more capitalism. The imperious intellectual who ran the country with a team McKinsey consultants…who promptly drove it into the ground. Yes, really — during the Obama years, life expectancy, incomes, and savings all fell. Warren isn't that person — the dry, arid, abstract intellectual, lacking human values, the capacity and need to relate, a soul.

She is a very different person. She is the best among us in the best way. There are many "bests" among us, but the truth is that so far, not many of them are nearly good enough. The "best" kids — meaning the "smartest" — go off to work on Wall St and Silicon Valley. They don't give a shit about anything or anyone but themselves and their own gratification. The "best" managers, meaning the most profitable ones, become CEOs, who promptly loot the companies they're entrusted with. They don't give a damn about anyone but themselves and the hedge fund bots that trade their shares. The "best" among us are often only "best" in the worst possible way — and that is what has gone wrong with America in many ways, my friends.

But Warren is the best among us in the best way, the way that counts the most. She has grown in decency. She has retained and expanded her humanity. Her courage and passion have only ignited hotter. So much so that there she is — not just catering to us, telling us what we want to hear…but what we need to. Speaking these difficult truths to us. These hard and painful facts. We are a failing country. The world laughs at us. The bad guys are demolishing our society. We need a plan, a hundred plans, a thousand plans.

And so she says we need to always be engaged in the struggle to become our best selves. Again — or maybe for the first time, take your pick. But only the best among us in the best way, the person of the truest character, goodness, humanity, decency, can do that — challenge, encourage, provoke, lead us to become our better selves. No one else can do it, when you think about it. (All that is what it genuinely means to be the best among us, isn't it?)

Here is a secret. That is what a democracy really is. It is what civilization really is, if the word means anything. And it is what a life well lived is, too. Just that — to be perpetually engaged in this impossible struggle to ever become your better self. To be able to fall from the heights into the dirt, laugh — instead of screaming at your neighbour, beating the earth, or kicking the mountain — dust yourself, look up, set your jaw with determination, and try all over again. All the things that we cherish and treasure, all the things we have learned from the catastrophes and mistakes of history — they add up to just that.

It seems to me that Elizabeth Warren understands all that. In a way that our leaders have long since forgotten. She scares me. Because I know she'll always challenge me, encourage me, provoke me, test me. Are you becoming your best self? Still in the fight? Still climbing Camus' impossible mountain? Fell down again? Laugh — dust it off — look up — try again. Get up there.

I'm trying, I'm trying, damn you. Thank you, thank you.

Umair
June 2019

ANS -- KAMALA HARRIS vs DRINKING HEAVILY AND WAITING TO DIE

this one is very optional.  It's yet another analysis of the Dem  primary race.  I don't necessarily agree with it, but she does cover a lot of ground.  Kamala Harris is a bit too vicious for me.  It's pretty short too.  

Find it here:  https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/kamala-harris-vs-drinking-heavily-waiting-die-gayle-leslie/?fbclid=IwAR2AIZP3zOa0J5_2Wj0YqVD_WcZd-DrzuOKTlz1XThq6z0zML6bp3SYMTW4 

--KIM

KAMALA HARRIS vs DRINKING HEAVILY AND WAITING TO DIE

Published on June 29, 2019

Gayle LeslieFollow

Actor, Writer, Political Consultant, Non-Profit Consultant, Event/Project Mgr

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First, I love Joe Biden. Nothing will change that. And he is an honorable man, no racist at all. His limitations are not based in race or gender, they are based in social conventions of the past. I guarantee that when he was dealing James Eastland and Herman Talmadge, and even Strom Thurmond, he was condescended to because those guys condescended to everybody. The difference between being called "son" and being called "boy" was that the son gets taken to the wood shed and it ain't pretty, the boy gets put at the bottom of the Mississippi, and well... Trust me, as a daughter of the south, that kind of psychopath will do what it takes to maintain control over anybody.

Having said that, litigating choices of the past, in very different times, with people who were never going to be swayed by reason – it was all pure politics – is not a place we want to dwell for long. He did what he felt he had to do to get some measure of progress at the time. That time, however, has passed.

What was the last straw for me after a long few weeks of unforced errors, where a more humble, deferential tone – even a minimal show of contrition would have made all the difference – was not Joe Biden's legislative history on civil rights, it was that he didn't come prepared with a better response to what he had to know was coming. All these exceptionally skilled professionals assisting him in debate prep and not one of them said, "Here's what you say when this comes up, Mr. Vice President: 'I'm sorry that I was insufficient and I am sorry that I hurt you. I did what I felt I had to at the time to get some concessions because I knew we would never get all that you deserved.'" This would not have diminished him at all, it would have made him appear strong enough to be kind and compassionate when he knew that he'd not done a perfect job, he'd done what he felt he could. He could have simply followed Pete Buttigieg's lead.

More than merely appearing unprepared, though, his unwillingness to engage Senator Harris, instead defaulting into a defense of his pretty obviously outdated positions, felt "Trumpian." An old man not open to seeing someone else's pain and responding from a deeper place, needing to be present, not needing to be "right": it was a fear response and this is what scares me, because Donald Trump is nothing if not a perpetually profoundly terrified old man. He's lashing out, projecting the terror at his core into the lives of every human being that he can because he imagines that as long as he can affect other people's lives he won't have time to die. And my "wakes me up at 3:00 in the morning" night terror is the idea of these two old men roaming around on a stage in front of the world bloviating about how they would rule a fantasy world that existed forty years ago where privileged white men organized the lives of women, people of color, people who lived outside the margins of polite society, without ever inviting those people into the room for the negotiations. Joe Biden is the "benevolent despot," and well, we all know what Donald Trump is. That's my nightmare.

My fear is that these two old men could wander around just talking to themselves, never landing a transformative blow on the other so that viewers think they just might as well not show up cause it doesn't matter who wins. That is my terror: Joe Biden cannot take Donald Trump out in a methodical, calculated match.

Kamala Harris can leave him bloodied in a heap cryin' for his mommy. And here's how I think we are going to get there.

A few other things, first: I love Elizabeth Warren. I want her on the field, in play. I want her in the government. I want her to run Treasury. I will personally mop her floors and do her laundry if it helps her stay in this. But she is not the best one to take Trump down.

I've had occasion to get to know Jay Inslee a bit and I don't think he comes close to breaking out in this field because the most pressing issue is putting Trump down, but he is right: the greatest existential threat to us all is climate change. Top among several potentially civilization ending threats that this manic moron-n-chief distracts people of real conscience from dealing with while we watch him act out.

Inslee knows more about climate science and how to implement renewable energy policy than anyone. The science and technology exists and the capability to use it for massive environmental policy reform – while employing Americans in solid well paying jobs in mass – exists now. The reason you don't know that is that the fossil fuel lobby is fighting like mad to get as much drilling underway as conceivable while this empty, pliable vessel is in office. Oil companies are just bullies and they know that when people find out we don't need them anymore, they are over. Jay Inslee is the guy, and he should be running the Department of Energy.

I'm a native Texan straight out of Trump country so I have skin in this game: Julian Castro is lightning in a bottle. He's been long underestimated, and he needs to send Beto O'Rourke back to Texas to take John Cornyn down. It annoys me that Beto felt it necessary to run for President at a time when taking down the number two Republican in the Senate would be a better use of his time. I don't see Julian Castro prevailing in this field unless something extreme and unexpected happens: a shake-up of magnitude could put him on a ticket with Elizabeth Warren. Otherwise, he could supplant pretty much any of Trump's cabinet of corrupt nitwits and start cleaning up the mess they've made, but I really want to see Julian on the world stage.

Pete Buttigieg really needs to stay "Mayor Pete" for a while because he has to come to the other side of the mess in South Bend. Big picture – much as I love this guy and am so grateful that his youth and decency is front and center in contrast to Trump – appearing to have walked away from his city at the worst possible moment will not serve him in the long haul. And I don't think he'll do it, he may even step away from the campaign far sooner than anyone anticipates.

And please, dear god, send Bernie home: he actually stood there on the debate stage without answering a direct question or actually engaging anyone. He just blusters. Others are articulating similar policy positions better and there's no way he goes face to face with Trump without bad things happening. Moderate Democrats would all just throw up their hands and stay home to drink and wait to die.

And this is how we get to there. Kamala Harris embodies critical aspects that, in this world, terrify Donald Trump the most: she's black, she's beautiful and she's utterly out of his league. Don't underestimate how disarming it is for a man as insecure as this loser to be confronted with a black woman – a demographic that has had his number from the start and never cut him slack because black women writ large have spines of steel – who would never have given him the time of day in any universe. "Tiny Hands" will completely lose his shit.

He will never experience that existential terror and confusion with Elizabeth Warren: NEVER. So it can be weaponized. He knows that and he is defenseless against it, and if confronted with it, he is going to come up with defense mechanisms that will be the rope with which Donald Trump hangs himself. What we need to fear and prepare for is what he does to the world when what remains of his mind is imploding, because at this point he really is running on basest, primal instincts.

There will be many more debates and by fall people will be dropping away. Good people who just couldn't get traction as fundraising moves towards the frontrunners. They will be decent about it and throw their support behind those frontrunners and those who don't will not make many friends. Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Julian Castro, Cory Booker and Pete Buttigieg will – barring showing to a debate with a bad flu – only get better.

I don't think Joe Biden does get significantly better. I think he is too stuck, up to his knees in the quicksand that is his past to show the presence and the agility to do the right thing, make the right adjustment in the moment. When he hears Harris challenge him it is not an opportunity to move forward with humility, he hears an attack on his very being and he comes from a generation hardwired to defend themselves. And whether he understands it about himself or not, the old white guy does not want to give any ground to the black woman who's telling him he did something wrong. Especially since he'd always thought he was doing her a favor. And that is the problem: he thinks he was not so much a champion of her civil rights as he was a benevolent benefactor. That is an innately condescending position to take and it is programmed into the genetics of very decent men of that generation. He's that way with women writ large, I don't think it's racist, I think it's just old and played out.

I don't hold that against Joe, but I also don't think that being confronted by a powerful, uber smart, fully realized black woman on the political field of battle should hurt his feelings so badly if he wants to stay in play. And he definitely should not come unprepared because he thinks his benevolence in the past has given him a pass on dealing with a grown woman as an equal. Some of the elements of her case were debatable but her experience of her experience was not. Joe Biden missed a huge opportunity, and it is only one of the huge opportunities he keeps blowing through because he thinks he deserves a pass, and we do not live in that world anymore.

Harris will seize every single challenge as a chance to hone her knives for Donald Trump, and Trump knows it. Biden will struggle. I believe that he stays in through the fall, up to the primaries, barring some unforeseen external. (And we should all never underestimate the effect and consequence of things not yet seen.)

If my premise holds, Kamala Harris rises to the top in the primaries, and when it becomes clear that she is the middle ground between the middle and the left Joe Biden will step aside. It may take the intervention of the one person we all know who can lean in and say "Buddy, you need to do the right thing," but I believe he will. And then he will take a minute before he comes out with a full-throated support for the presidency of Kamala Harris and he will throw his whole campaign apparatus behind her.

Barack Obama will wait in the wings so there is a very public demonstration of mended fences and party solidarity, then he will step up with all he got, as will all the other Democratic candidates, because the singular mantra is "Beat Trump."

That is why it is so important that no matter how harsh the moment may appear, the attacks can never get personal.

Leave the "showing my fat ass" portion of the program to the village idiot.

And finally, I do not think Donald Trump survives mano a mano having the case against him prosecuted by Kamala Harris – for one night, let alone three – without losing his grip and saying what he is really thinking to a black woman. And we all know what he is thinking, he can't help it. It will be exponentially worse for Trump than sitting across from Robert Mueller ever might have been, and – short of death – there's no way out that doesn't reveal him for the coward he is, even to his base.

I've heard the argument that his base won't care, but they don't matter anyway. Nothing affects or changes them. What will matter to most people who have even a thread of decency left is that that is not and never will be what they want to be aligned with, not anytime, not anywhere. And once he's said it in front of God and everybody, you are either okay with it, or you're not. Pure and simple.

And if that is still insufficient to end this surreal horror show then we may as well all just start drinking heavily and waiting to die.