ONE YEAR IN

Today the Biden administration starts its second year in office and the President marked the occasion with a rare press conference, that, I think, was intended to demonstrate that the 79-year-old President is in full control of his faculties, does not evade the spotlight cast upon him by the Washington press corps, and has the stamina to stand on his feet, answering probing and sometimes hostile questions, for more than two hours. He did reasonably well in this endurance test, but his handlers must have known that their boss could not pull this off without some offering up some gaffes that the President is known for throughout his career in politics. In his press conference yesterday, he made two of them, which, combined with a lot of rambling, hesitation, and awkward silences, made for an unconvincing show of governance control and competence.

The worst gaffe he made was by casting doubt on the legitimacy of the next election(s) with the John Lewis voting rights act heading for defeat in the Senate. He can fend off any danger to a free and fair election outcome by working with Congress on a revamp of the Electoral Count Act of 1887.

The other gaffe came in answer to questions about Vladimir Putin’s intentions about the Ukraine, first by speculating that Putin may decide to invade and then by suggesting that ‘minor incursions’ would trigger a lesser response from America and NATO than a full-fledged invasion. He seemed to be saying that Russia would be permitted to trespass on Ukraine’s sovereignty as long as it stayed short of an occupation. I don’t think that he meant it that way, but it certainly came across that way in Washington, Kiev, and Moscow. On this topic, he should have stayed with warning Putin that he would come to regret any violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty.

In all of this we need to realize that Joe Biden is fighting two demons: He needs to pull the country away from the populist, anti-democratic, and QAnon wave, set in motion by the Trump ascendency in the Republican Party; and he needs to hold off the activist left wing within his own party which feeds the right’s narrative that under Democratic Party rule the country would descend into a socialist backwater. The way out seems obvious. He should reset his agenda and explore with the same Republicans who voted for his infrastructure bill, who voted to impeach Trump in February of 2021, and who voted for the Stopgap funding bill in November, which parts of his agenda can obtain bi-partisan support. If the Infrastructure Bill passed the Senate by a 69-30 vote and the Stopgap Bill by 69-28, isn’t it worth exploring what else can pass with at least 60 votes in the Senate?

The best President Biden can do for the country is forging a coalition that permanently closes the door on Trump and the Trump inspired anti-democratic movement. For that he will need the support of Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, Joe Manchin, and, maybe, Mitch McConnell. Biden is the quintessential ‘middle of the road’ man. He now needs to build on his strength and craft a ‘middle of the road’ coalition of Democrats, Independents, and conventional Republicans.

Let’s find out what that kind of coalition can agree on. It is evident that voters need to be swayed, by effective governance, to not only show their confidence in their election integrity by coming out en masse when called to the voting booth, but also to convincingly defeat those who are actively subverting our democratic systems.

The President would be well advised to put the democratic (small d) credentials of the coalition partners to the test by asking them if they are for or against:

·        Automatic and same-day voter registration

·        Making Election Day a Federal Holiday

·        Increased accessibility to voting for Native American and Alaska Native citizens

·        Making it a federal crime to hinder a person from registering to vote or helping someone to register to vote

·        Universal and free preschool for all 3–4-year-olds

·        Childcare subsidies for low- and mid-income families

·        Paid family leave

·        Tuition free access to Community Colleges for children from low-and mid-income families

·        Perpetuating the expanded Child Tax Credit

·        Medicare’s authority to negotiate drug prices

·        Elder care subsidies for low-and mid-income persons

And then push forward with that part of this agenda that can gain a majority vote in the House of Representatives and 60 votes in the Senate. Any such push should include a prescription for how to pay for the proposed benefits. Don’t say it isn’t possible. Look at the 69 votes in the Senate that created the Infrastructure Bill and the Stopgap Bill of November of the same year.

Good public governance requires five essential hallmarks:

1.       A vision of where the country should be heading

2.       Competency at each component of the Executive Branch

3.       Avoidance of corruption and cronyism

4.       Excellence in execution and implementation

5.       Clarity and honesty in communication

If President Biden can avoid further gaffes, build a ‘middle of the road’ coalition, and lead his administration to gain high marks for each of these five hallmarks, he can look forward to a very successful one term presidency and America can dispel the specter of authoritarianism.

LEFTOVERS

We are rapidly approaching the end of the year and there are still a few things I’d like to get off my chest. Matters that have surfaced or resurfaced this year and deserve more than a casual tweet but are not worked out enough for a full column. Here are three of them:

1.)    Consumerism

The media have for weeks, if not months, been buzzing about the supply chain problems and the tragedy that our Christmas presents might not make it from China in time to be put under the Christmas tree. I look at this a little differently. Year after year I’ve been aghast at the degeneration of a religious holiday into a celebration of American consumerism. “Are you ready for the Holiday? Oh, no, I have still to find something for my aunt Betsy and my twin cousins Jesse and Josh.” Really? What happens if you just treat them to a warm welcome at your house, for a great meal, fine spirits, and some meaningful conversation? Or maybe just go to church together or take them caroling in your neighborhood?

I have no problem with exchanging some gifts of things that, otherwise, would have been bought anyway, like clothing and other life essentials; nor do I begrudge those who want to add luster to the Holidays with special treats, delicacies or gift cards for a great restaurant, spa-service, a bookstore, or entertainment. But who needs any of the crap from China that is now still locked up in a container in one of our congested ports?

I see a challenge in the fact that our economy has become excessively dependent on consumption and our consumption disproportionally dependent on China. This is bad for America’s contest with China and, implicitly, bad for the struggle between democracy and authoritarianism, and very bad for the environment. I shudder to think of the mounds of, mostly plastic, trash that will be the visual leftover from Christmas and will add to our already overflowing garbage dumps, where ultimately all these Chinese presents will end up as well.

America is much better at meeting it ‘wants’ than at meeting its ‘needs’. Our economic health is far too dependent on consumptive spending. We can put heaps of presents, wanted or not wanted, under our Christmas trees, but we can’t offer our immigrant population a stable outlook, we can’t offer our aging population affordable, quality eldercare, we can’t offer our children of all ages the best affordable education, we can’t make insulin affordably available to all of our diabetics, and we can’t even guarantee all of our citizens that they will be fairly represented in Congress, that they can vote on these matters, and that their votes will be counted.

2.)    Abortion

It now looks likely that the Supreme Court will change the law of the land with respect to abortion and give States’ legislatures further leeway in restricting a woman’s right to an abortion than allowed under its 50 years old ‘Roe vs Wade’ ruling. On this subject, that has disproportionally and undeservedly influenced American politics, I have a few thoughts.

In the first place, it is a shame that an existential matter like abortion should be decided by the courts rather than by federal legislation. The way it is going, we will end up with widely diverging abortion rights and prohibitions between individual States. To me that looks like a very undesirable outcome.

Second, when I think about the topic of abortion, the first thing that comes to mind is the need to make sure that, if an abortion is needed and warranted, it will be performed by licensed professionals in a safe medical facility. History shows that abortions will be sought and performed, whether they are allowed by local rules or not. In a civilized world abortion should not be pushed back into the dark back alleys of a black market. Abortion, like prostitution, drugs, or alcohol, can’t be wished away or outlawed, it can and should be regulated.

Third, I look at abortion as a ‘last resort’ resolution of an unwanted situation, after the options of carrying the pregnancy to term and/or adoption have been carefully considered and turned down. That choice can ultimately only be made by the woman, but it should not be made without input from the father-to-be and professional guidance from social services.

Fourth, in the case of rape or incest the woman should have the right to terminate the pregnancy without interference from anyone.

Fifth, in Roe vs Wade, the Supreme Court established a woman’s right to an abortion up to the time of ‘viability’ of the fetus, defined as being able to survive outside of the womb. Generally, it is assumed that this occurs after 22 weeks of pregnancy. In the Dobbs vs Jackson Women’s Health case, now before the Supreme Court, a Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy is at stake. And from the oral arguments in that case and the current composition of the Supreme Court we can expect the court to let that Mississippi law stand and, in effect, reduce the time for a legal abortion from 22 to 15 weeks (a more recent Texas law, which may also come before the Supreme Court reduces the time for a legal abortion to only six weeks). The ‘viability’ threshold seems to me to make more sense than an arbitrary number of weeks. After all, the moral argument is about whether by an abortion we are snuffing out a life. My view is that, in case of an unwanted pregnancy, the law should give a woman the time to assert her pregnancy and come to grips with it and a reasonable time to determine how to deal with it. I have difficulty thinking of any situation in which these determinations could not be made before the fetus becomes viable but imposing an arbitrary time limit of six to fifteen weeks seems hard to justify if a woman’s right to an abortion is recognized at all. 

The law should also protect the woman’s physical and mental health going through this process and assure that, if it comes to abortion, it is performed by medical personnel in a safe place. If the pregnancy puts the life of the mother at risk, the law should allow the woman’s gynecological team to order an abortion at any time during her pregnancy, unless the mother has unambiguously expressed different wishes.

3.)    Melting pot.

The theory of America’s exceptional power and viability is based on the belief that the United States of America is this huge melting pot of people from all different origins, native and imported from all corners of the world. It is true that the US population consists of all these different elements, but a melting pot it is not. It is more like a layer cake. Just like oil and water don’t really mix: you can infuse one in the other, but they will layer out, if not immediately then over time. Together with American Exceptionalism we can move the construct of the melting pot to the land of fantasies. If America was a veritable melting pot, there would not be a ‘Black Caucus’ in Congress, there would be no Native American Reservations, there would be no Slavic Village in Cleveland, no Little Kabul in Fremont nor a concentration of Somalians in Minnesota, and there would be no China Town in any of the major cities. Maybe it just takes time and a hundred years from now we see a lot more assimilation, much like what happened in the 19^th and 20^th century with immigrant waves from Ireland, Italy, Germany, Scandinavia, Armenia, and Russia.

Does it matter? There is definite value in maintaining one’s ethnic identity, as long as it does not result into pitting one group of Americans against another. We already do too much of that between Democrats and Republicans. However, the layer cake model suggests that there is a ranking of inhabitants by ethnicity, which is exactly how the many white supremacists amongst us like to see it. Therein lies the danger. We are barely a United States of America, much less a United Peoples of America. What do we need to do to get to the point that being American supersedes all other identities we harbor?

WAKE UP AMERICA

My very good friend Jerry, who was born in Philadelphia, graduated from Haverford College, and worked with me in Philadelphia, just gave up his American passport and citizenship. He made a career in international trading and now lives in Geneva Switzerland, after stints in Hong Kong and Singapore. After pursuing dual citizenship and receiving his Swiss passport, he decided he had lost his affinity with what America has become and therewith his pride in being an American citizen. And he brought his belief to its ultimate conclusion. It was not for fiscal reasons that he severed ties with his country of origin, it was because he is repulsed by what he sees happening in America. He did not act on impulse, but after carefully assessing where he saw America heading. Wake up America!

America’s two-party system that has long provided the operational framework for public governance is at risk of morphing into a one-party system, not because voters want it to go that way, but because the Republican Party has patiently and inexorably rigged the system in its favor. It has been able to do so by taking advantage of the people’s reverence for the Constitution, even where it no longer serves the exigencies of the modern society or where it has been misinterpreted by the Supreme Court. By taking advantage of archaic provisions in Senate rules like the filibuster and in voting laws and the laws governing the composition of Congress like the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929. By packing the courts with members of the Federalist Society. And by the process of gerrymandering Congressional Districts, to the effect that in many Congressional Districts the Republican primary, not the general election, decides who occupies the seat in the House of Representatives.

There are sensible, well written and well publicized, solutions to the imperfections in America’s public governance system, but today’s Republican Party has no interest in pursuing any of them, since they all would limit its inherent grip on power resulting from the fact that representation in Congress is adjudicated not on the basis of the national popular vote but on the basis of States (for the Senate) and Districts (for the House of Representatives). Don’t you see the threat to our democracy? Wake up America!

The American people have every right to be disenchanted with the way they are governed, or not governed. It is simply too hard to produce any significant legislation that deals with improving the lives of ordinary citizens. But do you throw the baby out with the bathwater? It is not democracy’s fault that no significant results come out of the Beltway. The fault lies with the two-party system that fails when one of the parties is hell bent on rigging the game and does not care about democracy. Under Trump, and even after losing the 2020 Presidential election, the Republican party has decided to do to democracy what Trump has done with programs, initiatives, and institutions he did not like: kill them rather than try to rework and improve on them. Cases in point: Transpacific Partnership, Paris Accord, Iran Nuclear Deal, World Health Organization, Obamacare (only saved because of one vote by John McCain).

The Republican Party (I deliberately stopped referring to them as the Grand Old Party, which it is no more) is running without a policy platform, only intent on blocking the Democratic agenda as a way of taking control of Congress in 2022 and the White House in 2024, by hook or by crook. The Republican Party is putting the great American experiment, democracy itself, in jeopardy and not by chance, but intentionally. The Atlantic Magazine is spelling it out in detail in Barton Gellman’s article ‘Trump’s Next Coup Has Already Begun’ in the January/February issue https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/01/january-6-insurrection-trump-coup-2024-election/620843/

The Atlantic Magazine is one of several media voices that are raising the alarm bell. At issue is no longer the difference in expectations of what government should deliver, which is a legitimate policy debate; it is about the functioning or dismantling of our democracy. In this struggle, the Republican Party does not want America to be leading the world in championing for democracy; rather, it is following the example of what authoritarians in Russia, Hungary, Poland, and Turkey have managed to bring about, a one-party rule in what is only a nominally democratic system. What irony would it be if democracy were to be smothered in the cradle where it came to life in the modern era! And yet, that’s exactly what we are facing. Wake up America!

My friend Jerry had seen enough. He threw in the towel and gave back his US passport. But he was already living away from the States and had found a home and citizenship in Switzerland. What about us, who are horrified by what we witness but have no choice but to stay Stateside? First, we should resist the impulse to fight fire with fire. The leftist rhetoric is as ugly and damaging as the torrent of lies, hate, and conspiracy emanating from the populist right. We can only protect democracy by exercising our democratic rights. Second, we need the remaining champions of democracy to stop fighting internally and seek common ground between the moderates on both sides of the center. It does not make sense to argue about a ‘Build Back Better’ plan, when democracy is under the gun. We need to sort out who is a (small cap) democrat and who is authoritarian and then use our votes to place or keep the true democrats in office. Democracy’s path goes through the voting booth. Wake up America!

There is a reasonably good chance that the anti-democratic, authoritarian, drift of the Republican Party will self-destruct. That the fire will burn itself out by intensity. That may happen when, with typical tyrannical abandon and hubris, the Republican Party will continue it’s ideological cleansing in the primary process. My bet is that they may go too far in putting up candidates for elective office, Statewide and National, who are unpalatable to the voters in general elections. The conventional wisdom is that the party of the incumbent President will lose the mid-term elections and the betting is that this will happen again in 2022. In a normal democracy that would not be a disaster. In America, in 2022, it would be the death knell of democracy. And yet, it will happen unless the election produces an unequivocal repudiation of authoritarianism. Wake up America and throw the insurgents out.

PIPEDREAM

How much more dysfunctional can America get? Congress finally passed a long overdue, bi-partisan, infrastructure upgrade bill and now the 13 Republican legislators who voted in favor of the bill are being crucified by their own party for lending their support to this rare act of Congressional governance. Never mind that they voted for a bill that had passed the Senate with support of 19 Republicans, including the minority leader.

There is so much wrong with the current American system of public governance, that it is exasperating.          

The biggest issue is that it has become virtually impossible to right the ship and make the systematic changes that could put the ship of state back on course. It is not for a dearth of available improvements that the current stasis exists. The only reason that America can’t get out of its own way is that in the two-party system, with the parties more or less equally balanced, it is easy to calculate if a particular systematic improvement favors one party or the other. In today’s constellation, almost every possible move to unshackle the political process and democratize the system seems to favor the Democrats and is therefore blocked by the Republicans.

At first glance, abandoning the filibuster rule of the Senate offers itself as a prime example of this reality. But think again: While dropping the filibuster rule would allow the current Democratic administration to push through its agenda during this Congressional term, it would negate and reverse that advantage the moment the Republicans regain the majority in the Senate, which is a good possibility for 2022. Worse for them, if, in 2024, the Republicans were to win the White House as well as the Congress, the Democrats would find themselves deprived of any defense of their minority control and would have to helplessly watch the Republicans undo their legislative achievements. On the other hand, abandoning the filibuster rule is one of very few things the Democrats can do on their own without Republican support, while they have the majority in the Senate. And they will undoubtedly realize that if they don’t make this move while they are in charge, the Republicans can drop the filibuster rule at any time of their choosing once they regain control of the Senate.

But what about other possible improvements to the public governance system?

The good thing is, that much can be done without requiring an amendment to the Constitution. The bad thing, that in Congress nothing can get done without 60 votes in the Senate, unless the filibuster rule is dumped, but in that case any improvement orchestrated by the party in power can be undone once the balance of power shifts again.

We must also recognize that not all systematic improvements can be made at the federal level. Democracy in the USA is in large part a matter of State control. Two State prerogatives have a particularly large bearing on the functioning of the democratic process:

·        The mapping of Congressional Districts

·        The apportionment of Electoral votes

But, at the national level, there would still be plenty of room for improvement by e.g.

·        Expansion of the House of Representatives

·        Automatic voter registration

·        Making Election Day a Federal Holiday

The Democratically controlled House of Representatives has recognized the need for improvement of access to the polls and safeguarding against disenfranchising minority groups within the voting population by passing two Voting Rights Protection bills that are now stalled because of Republican resistance in the Senate enabled by the filibuster rule.

Expansion of the House of Representatives based upon the results of the 2020 Census is not part of either Voting Rights Protection bill but would also most certainly be blocked in the Senate, as it would presumably favor the Democrats since most of the population growth since 1929 (when the current limit of 435 seats in the House of Representatives was established) has taken place in the dense urban population areas where the Democratic Party enjoys the most support. By adding to the number of Congressional Districts in the areas of the highest population growth, it would make Congress more representative of the population and make it harder for States to gerrymander their Congressional Districts. The American population has nearly tripled from the Census of 1920 on which the current count of 435 seats was based, but Congress has neglected to acknowledge that growth in its representation of the voting public.

If nothing else, two legislative initiatives could go a long way to making the US election system more representative of the population demographics and fairer to minority representation:

1.       Creating a new Permanent Apportionment Act that requires that the number of House Seats is based on the Census population divided by 500,000; and

2.       Abandoning the ‘winner takes all’ rule for the apportionment of Electoral Votes currently in place in 48 of the 50 States and replacing it with a proportional apportionment based on the popular vote for President in each State.

With the current number of 435 House seats, each House seat represented an average of 242,000 citizens under the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929. According to the 2020 Census it represented an average of 762,000 citizens. To bring that number back to 500,000 would increase the number of House seats from 435 to 663.

The increase in the number of House seats would also result in an increase in the number of seats in the Electoral College (which is equal to the sum of the seats in the House and the Senate plus 3 seats for the District of Columbia). It would take an act of Congress to make this change.

Abandoning the ‘winner takes all rule’ would require the legislative action by the 48 States (all but Maine and Nebraska). It would eliminate the disenfranchisement of minority votes cast in a Presidential Election.

Unfortunately, even these relatively minor amendments of the democratic process in the US remain a pipedream, as long as the People are represented by two similarly sized parties that are at unbreakable loggerheads with each other. This makes the outlook for a better functioning political system in the USA so exasperating.

EVERYTHING ELSE CAN WAIT

When, in 2014, I finished my book ‘NEITHER HERE NOR THERE, A First-Generation Immigrant in Search of American Exceptionalism’*, I was still in limbo about America’s destiny. It was not clear to me that the political system, as it had developed over the lifetime of the republic, had the capacity to deal effectively with the intractable problems that had surfaced and accumulated after the end of the cold war. I concluded that our system does not seem to be functioning as designed in the absence of a clear and present danger from the outside. I saw a problem in the two-party system, where two parties at constant loggerheads cancelled each other out and I saw the need of the creation of a centrist third party as a possible way out of the impasse. Like a ‘white knight’ or a catalyst for breaking the logjam. At the time, it seemed that our democracy was malfunctioning, not delivering results for the people, but the unassailability of the democratic principle was not in question.

That was before the Republican Party was hijacked by Donald Trump.

Now we know better, and it is time to face the harsh reality. Democracy itself is being challenged and it is seriously imperiled, not just in Russia, Poland, Hungary, and Turkey, but in the cradle of contemporary democracy, the United States of America. American democracy is imperiled not by foreign powers, but by one of its political parties seeking power beyond the boundaries of its popular support. What once was the Grand Old Party is no more. It has morphed into an anti-democratic, populist movement bent on taking control of public governance of the United States of America regardless of the outcome of elections.

It did not come across as particularly surprising or alarming that Donald Trump, after the closing of the polls in November of last year, declared himself the winner in defiance of what the polling results were showing. Very few people seemed to believe him and he had, already long before the election, declared that only election fraud could deny him a victory at the voting booth. And in court case after court case, claims of voter fraud were refuted. Without exception. More than sixty times. It looked for a while that the Republican Party would move on from an ill-fated experiment and a loser who had cost them control of the White House and the Senate. Election officials, Republicans and Democrats alike, in battle ground States of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania held their ground in defending the fairness of their elections and the accuracy of their vote count, in many cases after multiple audits and recounts. The result of the election was certified in each of the States and the members of the Electoral College were appointed accordingly. Under these circumstances, certification of the Electoral College vote by Congress in joint session should have been a routine matter as it had been before in all Presidential elections.

Not this time. On January 6, 2021, an angry mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, disrupting the counting of the Electoral Votes by the Congress and Trump supporters in Congress objected to the Electoral Vote counts in Arizona and Pennsylvania, causing the chambers to split and debate the objections. When order at the Capitol had been restored, both chambers voted to turn down the objections and certify the Electoral College vote, but 8 Republican Senators and 139 House Members supported at least one objection.

A constitutional crisis was averted this time, but the next time we may not be that lucky, because the weaknesses, vulnerabilities, and ambiguities of the Presidential transition process had surfaced for everyone to see. And Republican operatives at the State and Federal level are acting to exploit these flaws at the next opportunity.

What worries me most about this scenario is the apparent denial among democrats, independents and the few conventional republicans who have not fallen for the Trump spell, that we are facing an imminent threat to democracy itself. I detect only a handful of political commentators who warn us of the seriousness of the threat our democracy is facing. Robert Kagan, a senior fellow at the Brooking Institute and a member on the Counsel for Foreign Relations is one of them. In a September 23 article in the Washington Post he warned that we are already in a Constitutional crisis. Kagan writes: “The fact that Trump failed to overturn the 2020 election has reassured many that the American system remains secure, though it easily could have gone the other way – if Biden had not been safely ahead in all four states where the vote was close; if Trump had been more competent and more in control of the decision-makers in his administration, Congress and the states.”

Distress signals have also been given in recent books by Anne Applebaum (Twilight of Democracy), Fiona Hill (There is nothing for you here), Bob Woodward and Robert Costa (Peril) and in a well-publicized YouTube video by Bill Maher. But public sense of alarm is disturbingly missing. Even among politicians, although Republicans Christine Todd Whitman and Miles Taylor have come out publicly in a guest essay in the New York Times to exhort fellow ‘rational’ Republicans to “form an alliance with Democrats to defend American institutions, defeat far-right candidates, and elect honorable representatives next year – including a strong contingent of moderate Democrats.” They write: “We cannot tolerate Republican leaders – in 2022 or in the presidential election in 2024 – refusing to accept the results of elections or undermining the certification of those results should they lose.” Republican congressmen Lizz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger are resisting the Trump takeover of the GOP, and the insurrection movement, by their high-profile membership in the January 6 Select Committee of the House of Representatives. The next elections are not a routine choice between left or right, liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican. They will be about preserving or abandoning our constitutional democracy.

What can and must be done to stave off the looming constitutional crisis?

·        The Trump Republicans must be thoroughly defeated at the voting booth in 2022 and 2024.

·        To that end, Democrats and Independents must put up impeccably qualified candidates for elected office at the State and Federal level and push for a high voter turnout.

·        Democrats should stop quarreling internally and pass legislation, this year, to protect voting rights, to revamp our infrastructure, and to implement Biden’s ‘Build Back Better’ plan.

·        The Biden Administration needs to get the COVID-19 pandemic under complete control.

EVERYTHING ELSE CAN WAIT.

*The book is available @ http://www.amazon.com/dp/0692209778

DEATH BY 750,000 CUTS

America is on its way towards 750,000 COVID deaths by the end of this year. Think about it, this is equivalent to 250 times the 9/11 deaths that still traumatize the nation 20 years later. These deaths are not imprinted on our collective memory by searingly graphic TV pictures but take place, one by one, in the ugly isolation of ICU rooms where the silence is broken only by the hum of ventilators and cries of despair from the nursing staff. The tragic tally stands at 670,000 as of this writing, with 270,000 of these deaths occurring during the Biden Presidency. If these casualties had been the result of two years of war, Americans would be out on the streets in numbers not seen since the days of the war in Vietnam, which claimed 58,000 American military casualties. Yet, America is seemingly taking the COVID toll in stride, stubbornly refusing to be unified in taking the few simple civil defense steps required to put an end to the epidemic.

President Biden came into office, promising a quick end to the pandemic made feasible because his predecessor had made sure that a vaccine was being made available at no cost to the whole population, first to the most vulnerable and then quickly to everyone else. Between the protection provided by the vaccine and the natural immunity provided in people who have survived the infection, the epidemic appeared to be coming under control, at least in the USA. The relief was palpable, and people initially were willing to jump through hoops to get the shot. My wife and I stood in line for four hours in frigid Cleveland weather in February to get the injection. Who would have guessed at the time that taking the two steps required to slay the dragon, vaccination and mask wearing, would become a political football? The country has a history of coming together under a serious external threat, like it did for a while after the 9/11 attacks, but this time it appears to be more divided than ever, with disastrous effect. The deaths now occurring from the virus are largely, if not completely, avoidable. Not surprisingly, they befall mostly to the unvaccinated, a group that includes not just anti-vaxxers but also children under 12 years old and people who have just been dragging their heels on getting the shot.

The President of the United States swears at inauguration to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, but the expectation is that the first line of duty for the President is the safety and security of the American people. In spite of all the good intentions and measures taken by his administration, President Biden is falling short in fulfilling this sacred duty, as the numbers painfully show. He cannot possibly be accepting of 350,000 or more COVID casualties in his first year in office. And yet, that is where we are heading with a 7 day average of almost 2,000 new COVID deaths per day. He is at risk of suffering more COVID deaths under his watch than his predecessor. 

I hear voices* saying that these casualties are part of a deliberate attempt by Republicans who see vaccine resistance and mask refusal as legitimate ways to derail the Biden Presidency. That these Republicans love to see the current administration fail in its top priority of getting the COVID epidemic under control and make this failure an issue in the 2022 midterm election and the 2024 Presidential election. Whether the GOP deviousness goes this far or not, it is indisputable that virtually all the resistance against vaccination and mask wearing is coming from the extreme wings of our politics, on the right and the left side of the great political divide. The Biden administration should be much more emphatic and unapologetic in mandating vaccination as it is the only way to stem the tide of new COVID infections, hospitalizations, and deaths. It cannot allow to let the abundant domestic supply of vaccines go to waste. And it cannot allow the virus to continue to develop new and increasingly dangerous mutations.

While we see a spirit of resistance against federal control of COVID defense go insufficiently contested, we are witnessing a ‘holier than thou’ tendency among GOP operatives who want to outdo each other in fealty to their spiritual and ideological leader, the 45^th President of the United States. Without exception, these Republican ‘leaders’ reject mandated vaccinations and mask wearing and many of them still maintain that Trump won the 2020 election and that, therefore, the Biden Presidency is illegitimate and should be brought down. These ‘leaders’ characterize the January 6 attack on the Capitol as a peaceful demonstration, protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution, and are now calling for acquittal of the insurrectionists who ransacked the Capitol that day, threatened the assembled representatives and tried to keep Congress from certifying the outcome of the Presidential election of 2020.

Egged on by the right-wing media, these people are the real culprits. They are trespassing against their oath of office and have blood on their hands. They are directly responsible for the avoidable COVID deaths we continue to endure. Unfortunately, their ranks are swelling since more and more conventional Republicans are either giving up on the GOP or are being forced out by local extremist factions in their States or Districts. Latest case in point for the extremist trend in the GOP is the decision by Anthony Gonzalez, the Ohio representative for the 16^th District, which includes some of the Cleveland suburbs, not to run for office in 2022. Gonzalez, a Cuban American who starred as an Ohio State wide receiver and earned an M.B.A. at Stanford, was one of 10 Republican representatives voting to impeach Donald Trump after the January 6 Capitol insurrection. He called the former President ‘a cancer for the country’ and spoke of a ‘toxic environment’ within the Republican Party. He once was regarded, at 37 years of age, a rising star at the Republican firmament.

Maybe, just maybe, this is happening for a good reason. Maybe, just maybe, the GOP is killing itself from within by marginalizing or expelling the few remaining conventional Republicans. If this trend continues and the GOP offers the voting public a slate of Trumpists for the 2022 midterms, it may just snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

If the GOP puts up candidates like it did with Larry Elder in the gubernatorial recall contest in California, it may in effect throw the Biden administration a lifeline and allow the Democrats to keep their tenuous grip on Congress. I refuse to believe that Independents and conventional Republicans will allow the Trump movement to take control of the Congress. If the Republican primaries favor the Trump loyalists, they may earn themselves a Pyrrhus victory that will turn into defeat in the general election.

In the meantime, the Biden administration does not help its cause by ineptly handling the exit from Afghanistan, finished with a horrible, misguided drone attack on 10 innocent Afghans, including 7 children, and the lack of organization and control exhibited at handling the influx of illegal immigrants on our Southern border.

At a time that it needs to show mastery in governing competence in order to steer its ambitious platform of voting protection, infrastructure upgrade, and inequality reduction through an uncooperative Congress, it is at risk of getting waylaid by serious failings in its operative management.   It has one year left to get the COVID epidemic under control, prevent further avoidable deaths, retake control of its borders and avoid anymore operational blunders. And then, it will need help from the GOP shooting itself in the foot by presenting an unelectable slate of representatives for the midterm election if it wants to have any chance of keeping control of Congress so that it gets two more years to change public governance in a more progressive, future oriented, direction. As it stands, there is every chance that the Biden administration will suffer the fate of the nation: Death by 750,000 cuts.

* Notably Susan B. Glasser in a September 16 article in The New Yorker.

AMERICAN CULTURE

Every distinct culture is rich in untouchable topics, features, belief systems and the like, but few are richer in stringent ‘a-priori rules’ than the American norm system. I find it counterintuitive that, in a society that prides itself in championing personal freedom and individual responsibility, there are so many places ‘you just don’t go’.

You don’t show up at a friend’s or a neighbor’s house, uninvited.

You don’t talk about money, religion, or politics at social gatherings.

You don’t let your grass grow beyond a few inches and you certainly don’t allow it to be overtaken by dandelions.

You don’t kneel when the national anthem is played.

You don’t disrespect the flag (but you are allowed to wear it as a bathing suit, covering your bottom).

Note that none of these norms contribute in any way to a better understanding between people, to a more compassionate ambiance, or to better respect for diversity of opinion and heritage. How much better off would we have been if we had embraced an entirely different set of norms? Norms that would support more solidarity between people of different creed, provenance, race, sexual orientation, education level, and societal status. And norms that would provide a corner stone for a common purpose and collective ambition.

The American culture has developed from rebellion against authority (the British rule) and the frontier spirit. But the British rule was vanquished, and the frontier has been pushed back into the Pacific Ocean. Yet, it seems, we have never adjusted to the new reality. Or, at least, a vocal minority of us has refused to adjust to the new reality and has organized politically to preserve the outdated norms. And, because of peculiarities in the American system of public governance, they may very well be in control for the foreseeable future.

America is still the most prosperous and powerful country on earth, but it can’t build consensus on how to put that prosperity and power to good use. It lacks the collective will and strategic plan to apply its wealth and power to a process of improving the life of humankind, in America first, but, closely behind, all over the world.

Just in the past twenty years, America has squandered trillions of dollars on unnecessary and ill-fated wars. Think about the tremendous good that kind of money could have done, had it been applied to causes that would have improved the lot of humanity. Like redoubling efforts to cure −as yet− incurable diseases; or taking effective steps in minimizing human contributions to climate change and building defenses against the impacts of global warming; or simply reducing the inequalities (in income, access to healthcare and education, safety and security, and wellness), not resulting from personal shortcomings but merely and directly from where you were born and who your parents are.

The Biden administration is making a serious effort to redirect public spending in that direction and increase it measurably. But it is hampered by a razor thin margin of support in Congress, by a impatient and rebellious left wing of the Democratic party, and by archaic parliamentary rules of the Senate. If, in the year it has left before the next election, it fails in getting its ambitious agenda of physical and human infrastructure improvement, and voting reform past Congress and signed into law, it is unlikely to get a second chance.

No one can, in good conscience, argue that America does not have the financial strength to implement the policy initiatives of the Biden administration. It may have to be more reticent about getting entangled in unnecessary wars that it cannot win, and it may have to rethink its tax structure and tax collection system, but it certainly has the wealth generating power, the wherewithal, to address the triple threat of incurable disease, global warming, and extreme inequality. The real question is if America can muster the political will to shift away from the frontier mentality of individual responsibility to a more cosmopolitan, contemporary, mentality of collective responsibility for the wellness of society at large and all the individuals comprised within.

The 2022 and 2024 elections will show us if that political will exists. The deck is stacked against Joe Biden and the Democrats. The popular will, that largely seems to support the Biden initiatives, does not account for much in the current system of government. The gerrymandering of voting districts, limiting the House of Representatives to 435 members (a number that was reached in 1913), the disappearing political center, and the filibuster rule in the Senate have seen to that. Midterm elections are notoriously unaccommodating to incoming administrations and Joe Biden’s botching of the exit from Afghanistan is sure to take away from any residual goodwill he may had retained with Republican voters and lawmakers.

Unfortunately, changing the American culture and national priorities has become a purely partisan matter. We have managed to turn even sound public health policy on vaccination and mask wearing into expressions of partisan creed. It should not be that way. Societal strengthening never was and should not be a Democratic prerogative. America will have a hard time being seen by the rest of the world as the legitimate world leader, the example to emulate, if it fails to create a better, more just and sustainable, society at home.