26 July 2019
Dear Interested Readers,
The Movie Got Mixed Reviews. I Think I Will Read the Book.
Being retired has its benefits and its liabilities. Since I did not have to go to work on Wednesday, or on any day, I was able to invest the whole day listening to another old man try to walk a fine line between his reputation as a no nonsense prosecutor and law enforcement agent of universal esteem and the role that Democrats hoped he would play as the whistle blower who called the president’s behavior out of bounds. Robert Mueller labored within unrealistic guidelines that seem designed to limit the transfer of information to the public. He delivered his message in a combination of code and contortion that diminished its impact on all but those willing to closely consider every clue.
I was delighted to be able to invest the time, but as the old saying goes, “It was a long run for a short slide!” If you need a translation and explanation of that aphorism, it probably comes from baseball and base stealing, and essentially means a small return on a big investment. Democrats had hoped the hearings would contain a dramatic moment that would force the president to give up his chant of “no collusion, no obstruction,” but they should have realized that was a long shot. For anyone who watched, the show did deliver the same information that was contained in Mueller’s written report, but you know the desired benefit was not realized when the next 24 hours of the news cycle becomes a continuing debate about whether the hearings had enough impact to change anyone’s pre hearings opinion of the president.
I heard more than once that the grand plan of the Democratic leadership for the hearings was based on the fact that Mueller’s report was like a good book that few people would read. These days few people read, but many more go to the movies. They hoped that Mueller would be the star of their movie version of his book, and that his performance would be Oscar worthy. If that was their goal, perhaps they should have gone one step further and inserted Robert De Niro into the hearing to play Mueller, as he does on “Saturday Night Live” skits that parody the president’s antics. De Niro has proven that he is a man who can deliver an Oscar winning performance, and his portrayal of Mueller on SNL is a little more dynamic than the real McCoy.
Investing a beautiful summer day sitting inside your house listening to a man say, “ Yes, if it is in my report,” or “I can’t talk about that,” or worse yet watch a famous man flounder in confusion as you scratch your head over hearing that the president was “not exculpated,” leaves you wishing that you had an obligation that called you away. Mueller’s use of “not exculpated” is worth your review if you did not see the hearings or catch the clip on the nightly news of Mueller using legalese as a surrogate for common language. Chairman Nadler of the House Judiciary Committee asked Mueller whether or not the president was exonerated by the findings of his investigation. Mueller reported that the president was not exonerated. That simple exchange led to the most frustrating moment of the day for me. Chairman Nadler was clearly looking to drive home a big point to the viewers at home when he asked Mueller to explain in “plain terms” the meaning of his finding that the president was not exonerated so that the American people “could understand it.” If you were at work, or did not catch it on the replay of news, you have to watch Mueller’s response to that simple request to get the sense of frustration that permeated the day. Click here to see and hear for yourself what I mean. I got some morbid satisfaction listening to Stephen Colbert’s monologue making fun of the day and this pivotal exchange. I would also recommend Colbert’s interview with Fox News commentator, Chris Wallace, who presented a conservative journalist’s take on the day and what it meant. The translation of Wallace’s biased assessment is that Democrats failed to change the minds of many undecided voters who might be having concerns about the president, and Trump can still get away with murder.
I worry that we have been exposed to the President’s illiberal behavior for so long that a significant number of Americans have become unable to recognize it as a threat to our Democracy. That fact is a threat to any improvement in the complex issues of healthcare and the social determinants of health which continue to be vulnerable to administrative and judicial attacks as recently demonstrated, once again, by the administration’s decision to try to deny three million people continuing access to food stamps, and by its support of a spurious lawsuit designed to end the ACA since it could not be repealed by Congress.
I long for more politicians like the late John McCain who was a political conservative and patriot who embraced the same norms of behavior and respect for the rule of law that is espoused by “liberals” on the other side of the aisle. McCain, unlike many of those who turn a blind eye to the real harms already visited on the poor and on the environment by this administration, knew that our society has been strengthened and sustained by the respectful exchange of different opinions on the important questions of the times when those conversations occurred within the context of mutually accepted principles. He did not vote against the Republican plan to repeal and replace Obamacare because he thought the ACA was a good idea, but because he thought the proper process had not been followed and that the Republican “replacement” was worse, and would hurt millions of people. He was politically conservative, but he cared about people. McCain was living proof that conservative values are part of the balance in a society that is seeking to ameliorate its imperfections without taking risks that undermine previous gains with “unintended” consequences.
John McCain, unlike Donald Trump, knew that the best outcomes were the product of a shared reverence for the messy processes of negotiation and exploration of ideas that have brought us this far. If you listened closely to Robert Mueller’s testimony, it becomes clear through the fog of the monosyllabic responses and the recurrent references to “read the report” that there is ample evidence that our president is a threat to “the rule of law,” and whether or not he realizes it, or whether his supporters will admit it, his first response to any issue is to use lies, denials, bullying, force, bribes, relationships with foreign powers who do not respect our values, and any other shortcut to getting what he wants. More of a concern is the number of people who have been willing to look away from his shameful behavior in office because he delivers to them what they want and have not been able to get by following the norms of behavior that have preserved and protected our democracy.
This president and those that support him have proven that they have no understanding of the principles of the Triple Aim. They have promised that they would deliver something better than the ACA, but have failed, and have given no indication that they are capable of knowing how carry us beyond the achievements of the ACA. This president is a barrier to the improvement of the lot of our most compromised citizens, and a threat to those of us who take our prosperity for granted. He daily threatens the progress we have made toward the individual opportunity that the concepts of “these truths” offers everyone, and that we have struggled to maintain through over two hundred years of debate, and when debate failed, a bloody civil war.
Who knows what lies ahead for all of us? If there is any message that emerges from Adam Gopnik’s beautiful little book about liberalism, A Thousand Small Sanities:The Moral Adventure of Liberalism, it is an appreciation of how vulnerable and misunderstood liberalism is. We misuse the word every day, even as its accepted meaning is constantly evolving, and as demagogues provide misinformation about it to generate fear in the hope of creating confusion that will promote their interests. Gopnik recognizes the value and necessity of conservatives who embrace the rule of law, who respect the importance of credible elections that enable the peaceful transfer of the control of government, and who believe in the rule of law and support our courts to protect individual freedom and the expression of dissident thought. By that definition, compared to this president, every other president we have had until now, including even Richard Nixon and some others we have survived, like Andrew Johnson and Warren Harding, has been a supporter of liberal democracy.
Conservatives and liberals alike who believe in process and follow the law are jointly vulnerable to the bullies on the far left and the far right who seek to force their ideas on everyone else, at home and abroad. Such behavior will not lead us to greatness and glory, but rather it has always ended in loss of life either through war, riot, or unplanned disaster. The nuclear disaster at Chernobyl is a perfect example of the unintended consequences of an authoritarian government that is unwilling, or unable, to respond quickly in a time crisis because of authoritarian control of key actors, and their fear of offering an opinion based on data, that is at variance with the party line. The free exchange of ideas matters.
I am looking forward to the continuing debate this coming week among the candidates for the Democratic nomination for president. The slates for the two evenings have been shuffled, and Eric Swalwell has dropped out. Representative Swalwell performed well in the hearings with Robert Mueller, and is a man whom we may see again on the national stage running for president sometime in the future. It is worth your time to click on his name and read his statement about why he ran, and why he is dropping out. His position in the debate format has been filled by Steve Bullock, the governor of Montana. Bullock points out that he won an election as a Democrat in a state that gave the president a huge margin. What I am looking forward to hearing in the debates this week is more talk about how the candidates would guide us toward social legislation that would result in true universal coverage, the policies that they would promote to improve the social determinants of health, and how they would restore respect in the country for people with other ideas and differing points of view. The next president will need to be a healer capable of repairing the damage that has been done by our president, and is likely to increase over the next year and a half.
Beautiful From Above
Over the last couple of years, I have really enjoyed the gift of my neighbor’s creativity with his drone photography. The header for today’s note is yet another “screen shot” that I lifted from his most recent video. If you have a spare three minutes to invest, I can assure you of an excellent ROI. I would encourage you to sign up for your own regular feed from Peter, but if you don’t, I can promise you that I will continue to lift bits of his work and pass it on to you. He is a very generous man who gives his art away.
The scene is from North Sutton. Sutton is just south of New London, and I have had many pleasant walks and hikes there. Our area contains glacial lakes, wetlands, hills, and forests that have reclaimed land where frugal farmers once struggled to support their families. There were water driven mills in my town and in Sutton. The mills are gone now and there isn’t much productive farming any longer. We now have stone walls in the woods that were once pastures or fields. I like to think that the beauty that I see from Peter’s drone photography is similar to what I would have seen two hundred years ago before the mills, and when there were just a few farms and nothing else. I also imagine that Peter gives me the same view that is available to the occasional eagle that I see soaring overhead.
I hope that you have plans for a wonderful summer weekend. I typed most of this letter to you while the Red Sox were stomping the Yankees. I can assure you that I will be hoping against long odds that the outcome will be the same on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Is it too much to hope that it is not too late for the Sox to turn their year around?
Be well, take good care of yourself, let me hear from you often, and don’t let anything keep you from doing the good that you can do every day,
Gene
