But Seriously, About Donald Trump...

Nothing against Alec Baldwin and the SNL crew, or Stephen Colbert or Trevor Noah or Jimmy Kimmel, or any of the other professional jesters who have found a goldmine in the 45th presidency of the United States, but...

I can't laugh at Donald Trump any more.

On October 25, 2017 - the day after Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Arizona) announced his resignation because of "Reckless, outrageous and undignified behavior...from the top of our government" - Ron Reagan, appearing on Chris Matthews' "Hardball," summed up the matter by saying, "Donald Trump is a deeply damaged human being." (8:15 in this clip)

Matthews laughed.

I suspect that it was the type of reflexive laugh that sometimes occurs in response to scary things. To seriously consider the humanity of a political figure can be scary, both because it can force us to lay aside the comfortable contempt with which we sometimes regard them, and because it may show us something of ourselves in them. I don't fault Matthews for laughing, but I think it's unfortunate that doing so prevented the serious conversation that might have occurred, about what to do with a President who is not well. 

Too many of us have laughed too much for too long at a man whose constant need for adulation leads him to make boasts that go beyond being merely false and are consistently absurd:

It's funny once or twice. Maybe even thrice. But after a point, this constant, craven craving to be the smartest, the biggest, the most successful, the best - not only now, but in all of history - becomes sad. It's not enough for us to dismiss the perpetual hyperbole as a con man's habitual selling, when there are no transactions involved, when there is no material benefit to be gained. In fact, that may be the most telling characteristic of these tall tales - beyond being false, or even absurd, they are totally unnecessary. They serve no discernible purpose, other than slaking - but never satisfying - his perpetual thirst, providing morsels for his insatiable hunger.

That thirst and hunger make Donald Trump, not a comic figure, but a tragic one.

Trump's perpetual self-praise does not merely shows a deep neediness. It also raises a question: "How much of what he says does he himself believe?" Because the less that he believes what he says, the more dishonest he is. But the more that he believes what he says, the more deeply delusional he is.

Trump's neediness, dishonesty and delusion make him, not only a tragic figure, but a dangerous one.

In "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President", Gail Sheehy (author of "Passages") contributes a chapter titled, "Trump's Trust Deficit Is The Core Problem," in which she points out that "Donald Trump has boasted of his total lack of trust...his father trained him to be a 'killer,' the only alternative to being a 'loser.'" In the closing paragraph, she writes:

"Beneath the grandiose behavior of every narcissist lies the pit of fragile self-esteem. What if, deep down, the person whom Trump trusts least is himself? The humiliation of being widely exposed as a 'loser,' unable to bully through the actions he promised during the campaign, could drive him to prove he is, after all, a 'killer.'" 

Yesterday, Jan. 2, 2018, Trump's need, and possibly his delusion, manifested with new boldness:

Like a cop who responds to a mentally ill person with a knife by shooting them dead, Trump escalated, rather than de-escalating, a situation that put him on edge. This is a bad way for America's chief diplomat to respond to a diplomatic challenge, and all by itself, it shows that Trump is unsuited for the job. 

The men and women of America's military deserve a more trustworthy commander in chief. 

Now I'm going to risk being accused of doubletalk, as I answer an obvious question: Am I saying that the satirists of the world need to stop highlighting Trump's absurdities?

No, I'm not. All of the people named at the beginning of this piece know their craft well enough to know that the most powerful satire is always, at bottom, deadly serious. In the face of continuing absurdity, satire may be the best journalism.

But I am recommending that we all be as serious as the best satirists are - that we all be careful to make a distinction between laughing at Trump's words and actions, and totally dismissing the man himself; that we guard our hearts against contempt.

I am suggesting that perhaps pity would be a more appropriate emotional response to the man himself; that when we laugh at his words and actions, we should honestly face the fears that they evoke. And even, for some, the rage.

Finally, I'm saying that we should let all of the emotions that Trump inspires in us move us to action. That's what emotions are for, to energize motion.

Conversing with fellow citizens about the 25th Amendment might be a good place to start. But if that's not for you, then find out what is. To quote the amazing Jenifer Lewis: DO SOMETHING.

Reading Donald Trump: Responding To Charlottesville

Yesterday, in Charlottesville, Virginia, someone killed someone with a car.

If you haven't yet seen video of the incident, in which a car plowed into a crowd of people protesting a rally of white nationalists who were in turn protesting the removal of a statue of General Robert E. Lee - and if you want to - here's CNN's version, which stitches together video clips from two of the counterprotestors.

This post isn't about that. It's about President Donald Trump's response to that. He already had a press conference scheduled yesterday to announce new funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs, and took time to comment on what was happening in Charlottesville. Here's the transcript, in its entirety, as reported by Vox:

Thank you very much. As you know, this was a small press conference, but a very important one. And it was scheduled to talk about the great things that we're doing with the secretary on the veterans administration. And we will talk about that very much so in a little while. But I thought I should put out a comment as to what's going on in Charlottesville. So, again, I want to thank everybody for being here, in particular I want to thank our incredible veterans. And thank you, fellas. Let me shake your hand.

They're great people. Great people. But we're closely following the terrible events unfolding in Charlottesville, Virginia. We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides. It's been going on for a long time in our country. Not Donald Trump, not Barack Obama, this has been going on for a long, long time. It has no place in America. What is vital now is a swift restoration of law and order and the protection of innocent lives. No citizen should ever fear for their safety and security in our society. And no child should ever be afraid to go outside and play or be with their parents and have a good time.

I just got off the phone with the governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, and we agree that the hate and the division must stop, and must stop right now. We have to come together as Americans with love for our nation and true affection-- really, I say this so strongly, true affection for each other. Our country is doing very well in so many ways. We have record -- just absolute record employment. We have unemployment the lowest it's been in almost 17 years. We have companies pouring into our country, Foxconn and car companies and so many others. They're coming back to our country. We're renegotiating trade deals to make them great for our country and great for the American worker.

We have so many incredible things happening in our country, so when I watch Charlottesville, to me it's very, very sad. I want to salute the great work of the state and local police in Virginia. Incredible people. Law enforcement, incredible people. And also the National Guard. They've really been working smart and working hard. They've been doing a terrific job. Federal authorities are also providing tremendous support to the governor. He thanked me for that. And we are here to provide whatever other assistance is needed. We are ready, willing and able. Above all else, we must remember this truth: No matter our color, creed, religion or political party, we are all Americans first. We love our country. We love our god.

We love our flag. We're proud of our country. We're proud of who we are, so we want to get the situation straightened out in Charlottesville, and we want to study it. And we want to see what we're doing wrong as a country where things like this can happen. My administration is restoring the sacred bonds of loyalty between this nation and its citizens, but our citizens must also restore the bonds of trust and loyalty between one another. We must love each other, respect each other and cherish our history and our future together. So important. We have to respect each other. Ideally, we have to love each other.

One sentence set the Internet on fire, and well it should have: "We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides." On many sides? What the frick-frack are you talking about? Even some of his fellow Republicans took issue.

I suspect that many people, watching the video of his remarks, stopped listening at that point, as a result of their heads having exploded. But read the rest of the second paragraph, beginning with "It's been going on for a long time in our country," and answer me this: is or is not that entire paragraph a steaming pile that goes beyond being offensive into being incoherent?  What does "Not Donald Trump. Not Barack Obama" even mean?? And, what's been "going on for a long, long time"?

Then, keep going, if you dare - how does "the hate and division must stop, and it must stop now" - a sentiment hard to refute - how does that lead to a boast about "record employment"?

Someone killed someone with a car.

"We're renegotiating trade deals to make them great for our country and great for the American worker."

SOMEONE KILLED SOMEONE WITH A CAR.

The next paragraph is quintessential Trump: the childlike description of the day's events in Charlottesville as "very, very sad," buried in fluff about incredible people doing incredible things, and the assertion that "Federal authorities are also providing tremendous support to the governor. He thanked me for that." Because everything, all the time, has to become about him.

And yet, despite the fact that everything, all the time, has to become about him, in the last paragraph he speaks as if he doesn't see how this - a rally whose organizers are his supporters, in which some participants gave Nazi salutes while saying, "Heil Trump!", and in which someone kills someone with a car -  really is about him. He doesn't see all of this as a result of his success in feeding the fears and resentments that energize hate. No, he doesn't see that; to him, it's a mystery, so he wants to study the situation:

"And we want to see what we're doing wrong as a country where things like this can happen."

The phrase "so many sides" set the Internet on fire, but the entire statement, the entire utterance, was incoherent nonsense. If you form the habit of reading transcripts of Donald Trump, rather than watching videos, you'll see that incoherent nonsense - the weaving of incomplete sentences, pointless hyperbole, insults, unverifiable declarations of fact, and outright lies - is his norm.

And yesterday, I believe, Donald Trump's entire mode of public discourse congealed into an unusable mass of verbal putty.

The man who encouraged supporters to rough people up at his campaign rallies finished by saying. "We have to respect each other. Ideally, we have to love each other."

I'm going to go out a limb to say this: It's too late, Mr. President. The people who voted for you have been too strongly encouraged to hate, to listen to you speak about love. The people who voted against you are too deeply convinced that you do not know love. No one, friend or enemy, can believe that you mean it now when you say that we have to respect and love each other.

If you did mean it, then so much the worse for you, that none of us will believe you. And so much the worse for us, that none of us believe we can.

When Trump tweeted (of course), "We ALL must be united & condemn all that hate stands for. There is no place for this kind of violence in America. Lets come together as one!" former KKK leader David Duke CORRECTED HIM: "I would recommend you take a good look in the mirror & remember it was White Americans who put you in the presidency..."

The most powerful man in the world has lost the greatest power that he could have - the ability to inspire others to follow the better angels of their nature. Having chosen to inspire others to hate, he cannot inspire others to love; having lowered himself to operating as a fountain of contempt, he can lift neither himself nor others to drink from purer streams.

Donald Trump's presidency may continue - he has 1,255 days remaining in office. But yesterday, his leadership died.

Channeling Maya Angelou

I have a message for y'all from Dr. Maya Angelou. It's about your president.

On Monday, President Trump made a speech in which he attacked the media, took swipes at President Obama and Hillary Clinton, and rehashed his election night victory.

In other words, he did what does all the time.

ALL. THE. TIME.

But this time, my newsfeed was set aflame by people's reactions, because this time, he was speaking to some 40,000 Boy Scouts, at the National Scout Jamboree.

That made a lot of people deeply angry - first, because the Boy Scouts are supposed to be apolitical, and Mr. Trump's speech sounded extremely political; second, because Scouts are taught to develop a whole list of character traits that many believe the president lacks (trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, reverent); and finally, because the Scouts are KIDS, doggone it, and inciting them to, for instance, boo President Obama, was way out of line.

What struck me most was not that so many people were so angry, but that so many seemed to be shocked.

Although I am a supernaturalist, I am not of the type that is inclined to say that he hears from the deceased. But doggone if, after reading a certain number of posts about the speech, I didn't feel like I was hearing from Dr. Maya Angelou. And this is what she seemed to be saying:

"Why are you shocked? I understand you being disgusted, and perhaps even being dismayed. But why shocked? Donald Trump is doing what Donald Trump does. This is what was advertised during the campaign, this is what we collectively bought - even if only by way of a broken purchasing system - i.e., the Electoral College - and so, this is what we have, and what we will continue paying for, for at least the next four years. No one should be shocked. We should expect this, all of it, whenever and wherever he appears. He does what he does because he is who he is.

And as I have said before...

#COVFEFE. Covfefe? Yeah, covfefe.

Today, my Facebook newsfeed, and apparently the Twittersphere, is alight with references to "covfefe," a bit of gibberish tweeted by President Trump:

"Despite the constant negative press covfefe"

That's it. The tweet was an incomplete sentence that ended with a nonsense word, and multitudes are making great sport of figuring out what "covfefe" means. They find it highly comical.

To me, it appears obvious that the president meant to say something about "negative press coverage." The phrase makes sense, it is totally consistent with everything President Trump has ever said about the media, and "coverage" could become "covfefe," especially if you give up after trying two or three times to correct an original typo, and having no success - with phones that suggest spellings, correcting a typo can become an ordeal.

No, my question isn't, "What did he mean by 'covfefe'?" My question is, "Why did he send 'covfefe'?" Better yet, "Why did he tweet an incomplete sentence, nonsense word or not?"

I've never heard of that happening before. If nothing else, Donald J. Trump must be acknowledged as a master tweeter. Tweeting an incomplete sentence is totally out of character.

My guess is that he noticed himself misspelling "coverage," and that then one of two things happened.

1) he accidentally hit "send" instead of the back arrow key while trying to correct it or

2) he didn't correct it because a tiny, temporary mental malfunction prevented him from doing so.

I find both possibilities believable. But the second one seems slightly more likely, because the first would have been followed quickly by a correction.

And that worries me - what if we are watching the progress of dementia?

I don't find that possibility comical. I find it scary.

The #1 Question About Donald Trump

Finally, someone else is asking the #1 question I have had about Donald Trump since September.

Here's the question: Does Donald Trump have dementia?

Most of what I see regarding Donald Trump characterizes him as stupid, psychopathic, narcissistic, or some combination of the three.

None of that acknowledges the possibility that he may have dementia.

Whatever else he is or isn't, Donald Trump is first and foremost a 70-year-old man. For him to experience Alzheimer's, which often manifests during when a person is in their 60s, would not be strange or unusual.

And yet, the press, as far as I know, has largely ignored the possibility of Donald Trump having dementia.

Enter David Pakman.

By focusing on language, Pakman illuminates the fact that Donald Trump is frequently incoherent. In the segment of Trump's interview with David Muir that Pakman quotes, that may not have come across in the moment (around the 4:00 mark here), because one of Donald Trump's great skills is speaking with such confidence that people tend to go along, even when he not making sense. But when you read his words, or repeat them as Pakman does, the lack of cohesion becomes startling.

Now, David Pakman is not HuffPo, WashPo, or WSJ...but he does have a large enough audience (344,390 subscribers) so that him voicing this concern could trigger more of the needed dialogue. Because we need a LOT of dialogue.

Think with me for a minute. Would you agree that:

1. Donald Trump may well have dementia...
2. If he does have dementia, it will only get worse, because dementia is both progressive and irreversible...
3. If he does have dementia, he may become visibly unable to serve long before his term expires, triggering the exercise of Section 4 of the 25th Amendment...
4. If he does have dementia, the people closest to him probably KNOW it already, and are propping him up...

??

If #4 is true, then nothing that Trump himself says or does is as important as the question, "Who's really governing in the Trump administration?"

Perhaps that should now be the #1 question.

What do you think?

Mr. Trump, meet Mr. Gardiner.

On August 16, 2015, presidential candidate Donald J. Trump appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press," for an interview with Chuck Todd. The interview included this exchange:

CHUCK TODD: Who do you talk to for military advice right now?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, I watch the shows. I mean, I really see a lot of great-- you know, when you watch your show and all of the other shows and you have the generals and--

CHUCK TODD: So you do the--

DONALD TRUMP: And you have certain people that you like--

Trump's initial response reminded me of one my favorite scenes from one of my favorite films, a film that I think about more and more often as Trump reveals more and more of how he operates as a person. The film is "Being There," a 1979 comedy starring Peter Sellers, Shirley MacLaine and Melvyn Douglas, adapted from a novella by Jerzy Kosinski.

Sellers plays a man named Chance who has lived his entire life as the gardener for a palatial estate, and who only knows two things - gardening and television. His employer dies, and he is turned out to make his way in Washington, D.C. He has a minor accident with a limousine, and the passenger, Eve Rand, insists on taking him home so that her husband's live-in medical staff can tend to him. Along the way, she misunderstands his name, "Chance, the gardener," as "Chauncey Gardiner," and we're on our way: from that point on, the richest and most powerful people in D.C. misunderstand everything he says, including the reporters who catch him escorting Eve to a formal affair, and seek comment on newspaper stories about him:

"I like to watch TV."

The sauce on this delicious scene is the look of sheer admiration on the TV reporter's face at the very end.

If you have not yet seen "Being There," put it on your list. After viewing it, you'll understand why, for more than a year now, one commenter after another has compared Donald Trump to Chauncey Gardiner - most recently, Malcolm Jones at The Daily Beast:

"...both Trump and Chauncey are, in their respective ways, almost purely creatures of television. It is their shared window on the world, and not only that: Each man also owes his success to television." 

In 1979, "Being There" was one of the funniest movies I had ever seen. Nearly 40 years later, without being less funny, it has also become one of the scariest.

The Presidency of Donald Trump: Five Scenarios

Shortly after the election, I went out on a limb, and predicted that Donald Trump will experience a breakdown within six months of taking office. Since I'm on this limb. I may as well pluck the other fruit that I see hanging here.

Here are five scenarios that briefly describe ways that Donald Trump's presidency could go, listed in what I believe to be the order of their likelihood, together with the reasons that I believe they might happen. Saying that these might happen does not mean that I want them to.

1. Donald Trump suffers a breakdown, and the 25th Amendment is invoked to replace him with Michael Pence. REASON: as detailed previously, he is a psychopath who fill not be able to function within the constraints of the office.

2. Donald Trump is impeached. REASON: His tweet in which he declares that anyone burning an American flag should either lose their citizenship or go to jail was just another installment in a series of statements that suggest Mr. Trump either does not know the Constitution, despises it, or both. In any case, his business dealings alone make it likely that at some point he will violate the Constitution in at least some small way; his overall conduct suggest that he may violate it in ways large enough for even a Republican Congress to day, "He's gotta go."

3. Donald Trump is assassinated. REASON: Within a week of the election, Trump began walking back on his campaign promises - for instance, to repeal and replace Obamacare, and to prosecute Hillary Clinton. As time goes on, it will become increasingly obvious that he will not bring manufacturing jobs back, because neither he nor anyone else can stop or reverse the wave of automation that is eliminating jobs. As Trump's promises fail, his supporters will become angry. And we've seen what they can be like when they get angry. And a lot of them have guns. Throw in the internet, smart phones and prepaid debit cards, and you have at least the beginnings of a possible plot among people who never even meet face-to-face.

4. America experiences its first military coup. REASON: again, Donald Trump's manifest ignorance of, and possible contempt for, the Constitution. When men and women take the oath that allows them to don the uniforms of America's military, they do not pledge to defend the country, or even their own families. They solemnly swear to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." What if some highly placed members of the military decide that Donald Trump is a domestic enemy of the Constitution?

5. Donald Trump completes four years as president. REASON: Well, anything is possible. But this is at the bottom because I find it harder to imagine that the four scenarios above. And as we move further into this transition period, it seems that every day something happens that makes it harder still. Four years of a president who can't be bothered with intel briefings but who is so bothered by satire that he can't stop himself from tweeting his disapproval? Four years of a president who names a climate change denier to head the Environmental Protection Agency? I simply have no answer to the question, "What else might he do?"

Worse yet, I have no answer to the question, "What wouldn't he do?" 

A Week In Foreign Lands.

I'm better now. But it was a rough few days.

WEDNESDAY
It took me nearly a full day to identify what I was feeling.

It wasn't anger. It wasn't fear. It was sheer astonishment. I got stuck in a state of disbelief, of not fully accepting the data, of saying at some level, "This can't be."

Once I identified that astonishment, I asked myself why I was astonished. And my answer lay in the confidence which I had developed that Hillary Clinton would simply win - a confidence largely engendered by a single newspaper column that I had read months ago.

Sorry, I don't remember the author (I gotta get better at recording stuff like this), but it was an op-ed piece written by a woman, which essentially said, "There's no way that the women of America will let this misogynistic clown become president."

That column made so much sense to me that I relaxed. I still wrote a little about Trump, and I still voted on Tuesday. But mostly, I took it for granted that women acting in their own interests, and simply asserting their own dignity, would save the day for America.

In retrospect, I see that I held on to that assumption only by not paying attention to what was in front of my face: namely, that every photo, every video that I saw of Trump rallies included lots of women.

The biggest wake-up call that I did not take seriously enough was a photo that appeared in my Facebook newsfeed not long after the Access Hollywood video came to light. It was tweeted by The Guardian's Ben Jacobs:

I found that photo the saddest and most disturbing thing that I saw during the entire campaign. But I did not let it undermine my assumption. I treated it as an anomaly, and did not let myself ask, "How many women might actually vote for this man?"

****************
THURSDAY
I find out that in fact, a lot of women voted for this man; more specifically, a lot of white women.

Mind you, Black women rejected Trump soundly: 94% of them voted for Clinton, according to CNN's exit polls.

But 53% of white women voted for Trump: a large enough number that they, all by themselves, could take credit for his win.

Realizing that triggers an intense desire to understand. I find myself wanting to speak with some of those white women. Or rather, to listen to them. I still want that. I want some white women to tell me in their own words why they not only did not vote for another white woman, but why they voted for a man who speaks about and treats women the way this man does.

In the midst of all this, I have a thought that I have never had before in my life.

"I want comfort food."

I'm not kidding. I wanted food that would make me feel better. I wanted to self-medicate with a big plate of spaghetti, covered with thick meat sauce, and with some nice big slices of garlic bread on the side.

In the absence of comfort food, I let myself experience the sadness evoked by the certainty that we're going to see a lot of suffering in America over the next few years; that America has laid herself down in a bed of thorns.

***************
FRIDAY
I think about specific groups of people for whom things might go badly - especially gay people. I think about how the Supreme Court's pass on same-sex marriage may have made many of them feel that they could fully be for the first time in their lives. And about how now a reconfigured Supreme Court could change that.

Sadness.

Hey, you know who voted for Trump in an even larger percentage than white women? White evangelical Christians. How about 81 percent?

EIGHTY-ONE PERCENT.

God don't like ugly. My fear for America is outstripped by my dread for the church: this is going to be very bad. My best hope for the church of Jesus Christ is that the next few years will drive the final nail into the coffin for cultural Christianity - the idea that to be American is to be Christian. America's Christians just elected a known adulterer, a known liar, a dishonest businessman - who doesn't believe in asking God's forgiveness - to the highest office in the land.

John Pavlovitz says it better than I can. READ THIS.

Friday night, I get together with some Christian brothers for dinner. I share that I have never had such deep and extended emotional responses to an election outcome, and say I want therapy.

I have spaghetti with meat sauce, and garlic bread.

****************
SATURDAY
It was a rough few days. But I'm better now. How are you?

POSTSCRIPT: The transition. Holy crap. Racism? Nepotism? A president-elect who needs tutoring?

Can we return to Earth now?

Trump: A Prediction

I have not seen anyone else say this yet, so I will: I do not expect Donald Trump to last more than six months as President.

More precisely: I believe that within six months of his inauguration, Donald Trump's psychopathy will render him unable to perform the duties of the office.

I'm not placing bets on how his psychopathy will manifest - whether by his first State of the Union address degenerating into gibberish, or whether by him lying curled up in a fetal position on the floor of the Oval Office. But I do believe that by this time next year, Michael Pence will be President.

Donald Trump has assumed responsibilities that he can't lie his way out of, that he can't sue his way out of, that he can't file bankruptcy his way out of. And he has never faced the measure of accountability that the presidency imposes. And he has never had the constraints upon his will that the Constitution imposes.

I don't think he'll make it.

Some folks have said that the last few months, at least, have felt like we were living in a reality show. I say that we're living in a Shakespearean tragedy. The climax, the turning point, was when Trump decided to run for President; everything else since then has led, and still leads, to the future point when Trump is not only out of office, but out of his mind.

Six months. That's a layman's guess. I'll do more reading about psychopathy in the meantime.

And more reading about Michael Pence.

Election 2016: Making History, Making A Deal

Right now, America is making history. We are either electing as President our first woman, or our first psychopath.

If, as I expect, Clinton wins, will Bill Clinton become the First Gentleman? FGOTUS doesn't flow the way FLOTUS. First Man? Hm. No better, if you ask me. Given his vibe, I could see a bunch of folks deciding to call him First Dude.

Guess I'll wait to see what AP comes up with. Anyway...

I just voted.

For Jill Stein.

In California.

Sorta.

This is what happened. I learned about something called "vote swapping." In vote swapping, a person in a swing state like me, who would prefer to vote for a 3rd-party candidate, but who does not want to help elect Trump, can make a deal with someone in a non-swing state, like California, to swap votes: I'll vote for Hillary Clinton here, if you'll vote for Jill Stein in the Golden State.

This sort of individualized political brokering across state lines and time zones might have been impractical, if not downright inconceivable, just a few elections ago.

Now, there's an app for that. A couple, actually.

The one that I used is called Never Trump. This video, from its website, breaks down how it works:

As it happens, when I downloaded the app onto my phone, I wound up chatting with a fellow named Ben, in...California. And we made the very deal described above - that I would vote HRC and he would vote Stein.

So I did, and I presume that he did. Which brings up the possible flaw in this whole scenario - namely, that it works on the honor system. Neither Ben nor I can know for certain that the other man voted as he said he would.

Still, I like very much the idea of edging the Republic one step closer to becoming a multi-party democracy. And I flat-out love the idea of individual deal-making. Makes me feel like a rebel, or insurgent, or something...like I should be strapped and wear a beret.

Vote-swapping has caught the attention of the BBC, ABC, and NBC, but I am eager to see if any post-election analysis will give it credit for any measure of Clinton's victory (my presumption). After all, as Clinton loyalists have incessantly reminded us during this campaign, the 2000 presidential outcome in Florida (and thus, ultimately, for the nation) was decided by just 537 votes.

I am even more eager to see what pundits have to say about the role that vote-swapping could play in further elections.  We'll see.

Clinton and Trump: Does Anyone Else Deserve To Be Heard?

So, here we are.

The Democratic and Republican parties have both endured primary election cycles that have left many of their members disaffected, from supporters of Bernie Sanders who feel betrayed by his endorsement of Hillary Clinton to Republicans who refuse to endorse Donald Trump (including primary opponent Ted Cruz, who told party members at the Republican National Convention to "vote your conscience."). Meanwhile, the Pew Research Center reports that in 2014, 32 percent of Americans identified as Democrat, 23 percent as Republican - and 39 percent as "Independent."

Now that the primaries, conventions and nominations are done, the distress within both parties seems to be forcing mainstream media to pay at least a little more attention to third-party candidates. But most Americans will remain unaware of those candidates unless they appear in the presidential debates.

Unfortunately, the very structure of presidential debates has excluded third-party candidates from them for more than 20 years - the last candidate to join the Democratic and Republican nominees in a debate was Ross Perot, in 1992. The agency doing the excluding is the Commission on Presidential Debates, a nonprofit formed by the Democratic and Republican parties.

In June, 2015, the two most well-known third parties, Green and Libertarian, joined to sue the Federal Election Commission, contending that the FEC had failed by not compelling the CPD to open up the debates: "...a debate staging organization cannot use a criterion that only the Democratic and Republican candidates can realistically satisfy. But that is precisely what the CPD has done."

In September, they joined forces again to sue the Commission on Presidential Debates (along with the Republican and Democratic National Committees) in an attempt to get their candidates into the debates.

A favorable resolution of either case could result in Libertarian Gary Johnson and/or Green Dr. Jill Stein appearing onstage alongside Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.  .

Meanwhile, here are three blog posts that I wrote in October 2012, about how third-party exclusion, which I consider one of the biggest defects in our current system, came to be, and the results that it produces. I hope you find them helpful.

An October glimpse of an American spring? (October 6, 2012)
An October glimpse of an American spring? - Part II (October 16, 2012)
An October glimpse of an American spring? - Postscript (October 25, 2012)

Donald Trump And The Psychology Of Demagoguery

I'm going to play amateur psychologist here.

In November, a Black Lives Matter protester was attacked at a Donald Trump rally. The Young Turks, an uanbashedly liberal/progressive online news outlet, filed this report, with commentary by anchor Cenk Ungyar:

Last week, The Young Turks filed this report on a Trump rally in Vermont: 

The first thing we hear Mr. Trump say is this absolutely priceless line:

"We'll get more and more angry as we go along."

So, this is a man for whom anger is a virtue to be cultivated. And he appeals to people for whom anger is a virtue.

I believe his audience's anger is rooted in fear, a fear evoked by the realization that America's demographics are changing. Being white, male, straight and (nominally) Christian doesn't mean what it used to in terms of ensuring that you will be treated better than people who lack those identifiers.

Further, I believe that the fear these people feel is rooted in a self-doubt that runs so deep that they can't articulate it. But if they could, they would say something like, "I am afraid that without advantages being conferred by possessing at least three of these four qualities - whiteness, maleness, straightness and Christianity - I can't compete. If the playing field were ever truly level, I'd be done. I don't have enough of what it takes to win in a truly fair fight."

The real power of a demagogue lies not in their ability to tap into their audience's hatred for others; it lies in their ability to tap into their audience's doubts about themselves. Which is why my all-time favorite demagogue can tell his audience point-blank, "If I had my way, I'd have all of you shot!" And have them go wild.



Mr. Trump may never be that blatant, but if I were following his activity, I would listen for hints of contempt for his audience. I would also ask, "How does Donald Trump, through his companies, treat his employees, especially the lower-level ones?" Because the people in Mr. Trump's audiences are not his peers. If they were in his companies, they would be his underlings. His way-underlings.