OUR BROKEN POLITICS
The age of Donald Trump has been just 4 years long but for many of us it has seemed like an eon. New political lifeforms have emerged from the primordial muck as the party continents have broken apart. Unfortunately, dinosaurs like Pelosi, Shumer and McConnell still dominate the landscape. Politics has had its Cambrian explosion with a bewildering realignment of values, priorities and standards for how to conduct ourselves publicly. For many of us who love this country, imperfect and under informed as we all are, it has been heartbreaking to see the split in our politics become so vast and poisonous, a rift President Trump has been all too eager to widen.
Tragically, having not learned the lessons of 2016, both parties are again banking on voters choosing the lesser of two evils.
It is just that fact, the lack of learning from our mistakes, that has OurMortalCoil most concerned for our future. The die has been cast for this upcoming election and thus we will have to make the best of whatever transpires. Trump is definitely more a symptom rather than the root pathology ailing our politics. Neither political party represents the interests of America. Each panders to some ideology or identity hellbent on demonizing the other side while doing very little to bring the country together. Each is more interested in partisan sniping and parliamentary gamesmanship than solving this nation’s problems. Many of those who put Trump (and also voted for Obama) in office believed he would reengineer these broken dynamics. No one can be faulted for their choices, particularly if the choices for leadership are so limited.
One can dream that Trump’s time in office will bring about that change by opening our eyes to just how far we have slipped off track politically.
There are too few truth-tellers out there but having learned of some brilliant minds and young leaders this past 2 years, there is reason to hope again. For that hope to be sustained, we have to see things more clearly and both sides of the aisle have some serious reckoning to do. We have to break the trend of bad choices on offer.
OUR TRUMP DISTRACTION
The negative reaction that many citizens have to Trump’s mode of being is deeply visceral and not always rational. Recognizing that, OurMortalCoil has made a concerted effort to identify some of the legitimate reasons people support Donald Trump.
There were those who believed, incorrectly we would argue, that he would “drain the swamp”, that he would challenge the status quo and that he would be an agent of positive change. They are not wrong to want this but they were wrong to think that an amoral man like Trump could or would do the job.
Trump’s contrarian tendencies have led to some new takes on foreign policy. His posturing with North Korea was useless but, hey, why not? No other administration has had any success with thwarting their nuclear program and there really wasn’t that much risk in poking the little panda bear at the head of that dark regime. Similarly, NATO needed to be confronted about the unfair financial contributions expected from the US relative to other members.
Trump has been correct in identifying China as our biggest geopolitical rival. China does not share our values. While the communist party in China has allowed a certain portion of their population to engage in capitalism, they remain a collectivist, authoritarian regime without any laws to prevent the government from taking it all back at the blink of an eye. Perhaps because it takes one to know one, Trump sees clearly that China does not operate in good faith.
Republicans have legitimate reasons to have disagreed with the deal brokered with Iran by the Obama administration and Trump did not hesitate to take aim at this policy. He ran on this issue and lived up to his word.
Securing the southern border has been Trump’s trademark position. OurMortalCoil absolutely rejects the inhumane, nasty framing he gave to this issue when he announced his candidacy in 2015. He has played a very dishonest game about the border, fear mongering that bands of South Americans were marauding through Central America with the US in their crosshairs. The border issue was the opening salvo of Trump’s demagogic strategy: We need to keep out those “criminals” and “rapists” from below the border. He does not really care about this issue personally but he knows it plays well on Fox News.
Yet, Trump is correct about the substance of border security: It is ludicrous to suggest that we should not control our southern border. While humane and well intended, Obama’s DACA is an executive order that kicks the immigration can down the road and only deepens the divide we have on this issue. Despite what many Democrats would have us believe, preventing an uninterrupted flow of illegal immigrants across the southern border is not a racist position. Yes, there is a focus on the southern border that we do not have for the north but this is not because Canadians are primarily white. Border security with Canada is much more logistically difficult and, realistically, we do not face near the scope and type of illegal immigration from the north as we do thru Mexico.
Giving credit where it is due, Donald Trump is open to criminal justice reform and has been true to his word regarding SCOTUS nominations. His supporters give him too much credit for his Supreme Court picks but given that many of them viewed him in 2016 as the only candidate capable of beating Hillary Clinton, their support for Trump was tantamount to a recomposition of the court to the right. With this last pick he is delivering a SCOTUS nominee who will challenge Roe v Wade and other legal positions held by the left.
Regardless of your own views, Trump has delivered on some of the issues that his voters elected him for.
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So, at this point we have to ask what supporting a man like Trump will cost long term? The answer to that question depends on where you place the pillar of the political and ideological scales. If you believe Trump is purely a symptom of the broken politics that existed prior to 2016, then the cost has not been high at all. For many, he has simply been better than the status quo and definitely better than Hillary Clinton. As much as OurMortalCoil objects to how Trump has conducted himself as our President, that last point is hard to refute. Trump is a tax cheat, liar extraordinaire and serial adulterer but Clinton’s laundry is nearly as filthy. She was complicit in the wrongdoings of her husband, the full realization of which we may never know. Harvey Weinstein was a close confidant of Hillary and she has never truly renounced either. Bill flew on the “Lolita Express” a mind-boggling number of times and we cannot extend the benefit of doubt so far as to claim that he did not know what type of man Jeffrey Epstein was. Hillary looked past all of this and even called all of her husband’s accusers liars but we have every reason to believe their claims about our 42nd POTUS.
Taking these glaring shortcomings of HRC into account, Trump’s electoral win in 2016 was not a resounding affirmation of his vision for the future. Furthermore, in office he has been far less effective than his supporters will admit.
First, Trump’s biggest victories were easy. Any Republican with a pulse could have passed tax cuts with the GOP controlling both houses and it is no grand feat to choose from a pre-picked list of judges with the guarantee that a Republican-led Senate will confirm. These facts may only confirm your reasons for voting for him in 2016 but all of you could have also voted for any of the other 100 Republican candidates to achieve the same results with far less long term fallout.
The second point expands on that, Trump has made the long-term success of conservatism more difficult. Supporting border security is a legitimate policy that has been made unnecessarily difficult by Trump’s careless, mean-spirited rhetoric. We need to control our border but we do not need a huge wall to serve as an enduring edifice to Trump and send a message that immigrants are not welcomed. We should not dehumanize the people who want a better life in the US. We should be proud to have a country that people want to come to. An orderly process of becoming a part of our nation is something we owe not only ourselves but also those who seek to come here. In his lackluster renouncing of right-winged extremists, Trump has further deepened the incorrect view that conservatives are intrinsically racist. It is true that most racists embrace conservatism but it is far from true that most conservatives embrace racism. Convincing minorities of this in the aftermath of Trump will be challenging. Tax cuts from a man who sees greed as a virtue only looks like another handout to the rich in the eyes of many historically disadvantaged citizens.
Third, Trump lacks focus. Rather than effectively formulating policies, he has been an adept demagogue, manipulating and misleading to only achieve short term goals. He is truly a leader for our times, peddling fragmented information on social media platforms without any real knowledge or insight on offer. Trump has never really bothered (or had the capacity) to understand the issues. It is true that a leader can be bogged down by complexity but Trump has elevated the politically superficial to an artform. Flowing from all this has been a toxic cult of personality. Trump’s use of vapid modes of communication, such as Twitter, has capitalized on and even deepened the collective attention-deficit disorder plaguing modern American life.
Fourth, Trump has never possessed the skill to be an effective POTUS. Being a billionaire is not a requirement of wearing the mantle of a business-friendly conservative nor is it required to be POTUS. Yet these were the only attributes of note offered by Trump in 2016 and lying about those facts should worry anyone staking their future on what this man does in office. Put aside questions about who he owes money to and how this might affect his actions, details he has never felt you had a right to know. More to the point, there is nothing in his background that suggested he could run a complex organization like the US Federal Government. No doubt, much of the same could be said of Barack Obama but if you understood this in 2016, namely that Obama was an amplified community leader, then why would you elevate his populist doppelganger to the highest office? And of course Obama had political experience and is a far better person, regardless of what you may think about his policies. Trump had no experience working with others prior to being elected and has repeatedly shown his ignorance about the concept of divided government. He has flailed against members of his cabinet who publicly disagree with him, including military leaders who he claims to know more than. He has simply not been effective in the very complex role of POTUS.
Trump is a branding savant. “Make America Great Again.” “Crooked Hillary.” “Build that wall!” In business he has only slapped his names on things and run his mouth. He is more a daytime talk show host than businessman or president. He uses simple words and concepts to divide us with the hope that the lines will be drawn narrowly enough to edge out his opponents. In 2016, this allowed him to capitalize on the huge negatives of Hillary Clinton to achieve very narrow victories in 3-4 key states. As a result, Trump earned a thin electoral win while losing the popular vote by the same 3 million that marked Romney’s loss to Obama.
Trump has played the role POTUS for a TV audience but he has never really been the President of the United States of America.
Fifth and foremost, Trump does not possess the moral compass nor character to lead this country. If your response to that is simply “What about Bill Clinton?” then one could respond: “You are correct. Neither has been good for our country.” Say what you will about how he is better than the alternative but you cannot claim that he is a good person. He is the most self-centered person we have ever seen in public office. His primary objective is always to make the issues about him. No policy you support, no conservative idea you value is as important to Trump as what he perceives his self interests to be. For those of us who agree with some of his policies, we cannot get to the substance because the veneer of bulllshit Trump paints on everything is so damn thick.
Those who defend Trump by saying that he is misunderstood have failed to see how he is the primary architect of the bad impressions he gives. Not CNN. Not MSNBC or the NYT. Sure they amplify the negatives to the exclusion of positives (of which there have objectively been few) but he has put himself front in center every minute of his time in the White House. It’s Trump’s words, Trump’s style and Trump’s actions that fuel the opposition to his leadership.
Trump and his supporters have to own this. Sink or swim, Trump’s time in office has been the elevation of ego and bravado above substance and accomplishment. Psychologically it is more accurate to say that Trump has been pure id more than ego; it has been all instinct and short term tactics to achieve small, petty victories. For those who preach an ideology of personal responsibility there has been an amazing amount of finger pointing and whining about unfair treatment in the press, all the while missing, somehow, all the garbage this man has spewed during his time in office.
Trump did this to his brand and to conservatism in general. On purpose. Because he is a pathological narcissist.
Or, more accurately, because you gave him a free pass to do so.
Our Left Alternative
Make no mistake: Our Mortal Coil is not advocating a wholesale embrace of the left. To the contrary, the feckless acceptance of the anarchist chaos in the Pacific Northwest and other major cities is nearly as dangerous as the dog whistles to white supremacy that echo throughout Trump nation. Both sides strategically choose which enemies to take on when, in truth, both antifa and white supremacist groups should be completely renounced. Right-wing extremists are likely more violent than what we have seen from the left and absolutely need to be opposed. These people have probably been involved in the urban conflagration aforementioned. However, this would only prove that abdicating the rule of law creates the milieu of chaos that allows these bad actors, right and left, to operate. Ted Wheeler, Democratic mayor of Portland, has been utterly useless in the face of lawlessness and his sentiments in doing so are echoed throughout the left.
Furthermore, the postmodern, anti-Americanism gripping the left may be more insidiously corrosive to the fabric of our republic. Too many on the left accept a complete condemnation of the Europeans who founded this country. They reject the progressive arc of Western Civilization, seemingly failing to recognize that the very liberalism they espouse is founded on Enlightenment values. At extremes, the left can be every bit as authoritarian as the right and are now entangled, hopelessly it seems, in a web of sophistry that they themselves seem incapable of “deconstructing.” In fact, as John McWhorter has expertly argued, “Antiracism” and other identitarian positions within the liberal orthodoxy have taken on religious qualities whose proponents frame as intellectually unassailable. You cannot question the aims and tactics of Black Lives Matter without being accused of saying that black lives don’t matter. As some college biology professors with a clear track record of advocating civil rights and equal opportunity can tell you, there is no room on the left for you to challenge a “no whites can come to school today” proposal without being branded a racist and losing your job. Just ask Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying.
You cannot advocate for traditional family structures with heterosexual parents without being criticized as perpetuating “oppressive, heteronormative standards.” Really?
Are you really unclear about the fact that “defunding the police” will produce a disproportionate increase in crime within black communities? I have heard good arguments on the left proposing a shift in how the police interact with the black community. Unarmed intermediaries with better skills at de-escalating potentially violent situations are needed and could reduce the number of altercations between the police and citizens. But the left has greatly distorted the problem and puts far too little blame on those who resist arrest or commit crimes in the first place.
Are you really looking to change everything about this country? Are you really convinced that capitalism is inherently evil? What will you replace it with? Granted, our current implementation of capitalism is very flawed but no other system of governance ever devised has allowed for so much freedom of expression and exchange of ideas. The very opportunities available to the left within our nation proves this fact.
If you don’t buy into these extreme sentiments, then take your party back and steer the conversation more productively to real challenges. Like many of us on the right who lament the impact Trump has had on our cause, I suspect many of you are not thrilled with the far left. Liberal luminaries like AOC are too far left of where the party needs to be. She is a bright, intelligent woman who effectively advocates for her constituents. She is a patriot in that regard and deserves respect for her efforts. But are her positions now mainstream amongst Democrats?
Ezra Klein deserves respect within the journalism community. However, Klein and like-minded liberals are very focused on granular parsing of issues of race, ethnicity and sexual orientation but while each individual point made may have a legitimate basis, what is the end-point? Are we looking to an Orwellian future where a computer algorithm takes into account race, gender, sexual orientation and ethnicity to determine what role in society each individual should serve? Is every phrase, gesture and inflection going to be analyzed on the basis of race?
Where do you want all of this obsessive focus on features of identity to take us? Is passing a law at the Federal level to right some perceived wrong in your life the only answer to be offered by the left?
As the presidential hopeful of the DNC might say: “Come on, man!”
Our Unified Hope
Donald Trump did not break our politics but he has done his best to smash it into smaller pieces. He has made it more difficult to put back together. Trump’s pied-piper skills have taken him quite far in life, arguably too far. He is not the business intellect or leader his faithful followers believe him to be. OurMortalCoil believes Trump arrives at the positions conservatives support him for more from a basic instinct about which direction the political winds blow rather than actual understanding or belief. His conduct has been embarrassing and distracting and he has compromised nearly every conservative goal his supporters advocate. He is incurious and impervious to corrective feedback and he has made the task of selling a conservative vision to the next generation more difficult.
Conversely, the Democrats, actively or by fecklessness, have allowed the scales to shift them too far left of a populace whose balance point is actually right of center. This was a trend before Trump and has been accelerated this past 4 years in response to Trump. The left has become hypersensitive to and about everything and the supremacy they give to identity politics has produced an extreme deficit of levity and pragmatism amongst their ranks.
Nothing will surprise this writer: Trump could win in a landslide and as I have said, there are real systemic flaws in our corrupt donkey vs elephant system that produce very legitimate reasons to support an agent of change like Trump. If centrists don’t process the real reasons people support Trump, we are only doomed to have an even worse demagogue down the road.
If Trump defeats Biden, which seems unlikely, it will almost certainly be by an even smaller margin than he defeated Clinton and his mandate in office will be even less substantiated. OurMortalCoil does not see how this is sustainable for conservatives long term and hopes, desperately, that the GOP and conservatives in general will move towards the center and embrace, once again, the belief that character matters.
The same is true for Biden. His margin of victory will not be as large as CNN will pretend and should not be viewed as a mandate to declare war on conservative values. Let’s hope that his campaign add claiming (paraphrasing) that he will work as hard for those who vote against him as for those who vote for him proves true. OurMortalCoil has seen evidence that Biden has the character to deliver on this promise but is wide-eyed enough to not be surprised if he completely capitulates to the lunatic left.
Facing up to the challenges with China (and Russia), securing our border, keeping the footprint of the Federal government small and efficient and supporting our law enforcement community are all positions that the majority of Americans support. We just need a better messenger and if Trump wins, we can only hope that someone in his inner circle can compel him to change his ways. Unfortunately, there has been no evidence that this is possible.
The left needs to get back to their bread and butter issues but with some modifications. Education is one of the entitlement tides that can raise all boats, truly, but only if we don’t abandon standards and only if we break the chains of identity politics. There is much to have our eyes opened to as white Americans, much that we need to better understand about the disadvantages placed on African Americans by slavery and the systemic racism that followed. The shockwaves from all of this rumble under our feet to this very day.
Yet, that is not the dominant theme of our history. Instead of embracing postmodern, Marxist drivel, break bread with conservatives like Ben Shapiro who are open to universal basic income (UBI.) Focus on getting healthcare coverage for all Americans. Get back to environmentalism but do so without tanking our economy. Get some partial victories that advance your cause, incrementally.
As I have heard Chris Cuomo often say, don’t let a goal of perfection be the enemy of progress. Neither side is perfect and neither is wholly incorrect. Get over yourself. Stop looking for some ultimate defeat of the other side. It would be like the left side of your brain destroying the right. Really. We need balance and there has been none on offer recently.
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Better information is the remedy to the current predicament. OurMortalCoil recommends getting to know some public intellectuals that espouse very reasonable views. On the right there is Jonah Goldberg and Ben Shapiro (podcast “The Ben Shapiro Show”) from the world of journalism and one Republican, Dan Crenshaw (podcast “We Hold These Truths”), Representative from Texas, who stands out as very reasonable despite deeply held conservative views. Brett (podcast “The DarkHorse”) and Eric Weinstein (podcast “The Portal”), Joe Rogan (podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience”) and Sam Harris (podcast “Making Sense”) are centrists who bring intellectual starpower to bear on these issues. David Brooks and Michael Smerconish (“The Michael Smerconish Program” on SiriusXM channel POTUS) are talented centrists as well.
John McWhorter (podcast “Lexicon Valley”) and Glen Loury (“Blogginheads.tv”) are brilliant black guys who bring a lot of expertise to these conversations. McWhorter in particular, as a lexicographer, has expertly described the cognitive dissonance infecting the left right now. Both are clear headed about the reality of race while not drawing the same dark conclusions as so many do on the left. Andrew Sullivan is another center to center left journalist who is extremely insightful and quite smart (“The Bullward Podcast.”)
Ezra Klein (podcast “The Ezra Klein Show”) and Chris Cuomo (“Cuomo Primetime” on CNN as well as “Let’s Get After It” on SiriusXM channel POTUS) do a very good job analyzing politics from a liberal perspective; each is left of where OurMortalCoil thinks the country should be, particularly Klein, but both are intelligent and articulate and provide evidence for their positions, unlike so many in the media these days. In terms of politicians, Tulsi Gabbard and Andrew Yang are Democrats that right of center types could support. Yang had the best ideas of any presidential candidate in 2020 and he is not beholden to party dogma. Even though the founder of OurMortalCoil has never voted for a Democrat in a presidential race, Yang would have gotten his support over any of the choices available this cycle.
Lastly, as referenced in the Mission Statement, Jordan Peterson is a public intellectual I greatly admire. He wants to conserve the best ideas and modes of thought that have been honed through the selective process of evolution. He does this while also embracing the trait openness of those on the left who will creatively point the way to a better future. He advocates balance and a deep understanding of the positions being taken. Due to poor health he has been on hiatus this past year but is hopefully on track to once again add his much needed voice back to the public conversation.
Our Political Conclusion
For those of us convinced that the two party system is broken, it is imperative to get started now in supporting a third option. Bret Weinstein’s Unity2020 (articlesofunity.org) came too late to make a difference this cycle but he supports leaders like Admiral William McRaven, Dan Crenshaw, Andrew Yang and Tulsi Gabbard, among others, to change the complexion of what is on offer in the future.
The conclusion is simple: We can and must do better.
Please read the Mission Statement to get a more complete sense of what this site hopes to accomplish. OurMortalCoil is a humble endeavor that is still evolving and is likely destined to influence only a few, if any. We do not pretend to know anything more than those visiting this site and likely far less than many. Primarily it will be a connection point for those who are living their lives with limited time to explore all the brilliant discussions on offer in the world of podcasts. We intend to facilitate, in even the smallest measure, better discussions about the challenges that face the United States. Much work needs to be done to make this an effective platform of information exchange and we will be updating you few who are interested about how your ideas can be incorporated and discussed productively.
Take care and God bless.
