October 21, 2022
Dear Interested Readers,
Don’t Fall For The Con
I am hoping that sometime before the year 2045, which will be the year of my one-hundredth birthday, we will have enjoyed great success or at least substantial progress on the three issues which I think are our most critical challenges. First, I hope that by 2045, when we are a century past the end of World War II, we will have turned the corner on global warming and are watching the rapid reduction of carbon and other pollutants in our atmosphere. Second, I hope we will have abolished poverty as we know it now. We could have abolished the pain of poverty for everyone in the mid-sixties, but we got distracted by a useless war and our self-serving agenda of lowering taxes and abolishing “welfare” while incarcerating millions. I hope that over the next quarter century (well, 23 years) we will come to realize that none of us will ever be securely comfortable even if we have “too much” until all of us have some basic measure of “enough.” Finally, it is impossible to imagine a stable society in years to come without substantial improvements in our healthcare delivery system. We have amazing science, but woeful inequity in the distribution of its benefits. I often wonder if most of us don’t care about the health of others or are we just collectively inept. I hope that by 2045 everyone will have appropriate access to healthcare, including behavioral healthcare, that is free of bias, and inequity and centered without judgment on their individual concerns. Do these three “hopes” seem remotely possible to you?
There are some very difficult current problems that must be addressed on the way to the world I want by 2045. It is hard to imagine us making any meaningful progress on my three biggest concerns without resolving at least three current problems that prevent meaningful focus on my “big three.” First, we are still in the midst of social, political, and economic chaos from the pandemic. It is quite possible that there is more to come from COVID and if not from COVID some new agent that could cause us even greater misery. There are predictions of a resurgence of COVID grief this winter. In part, we are at risk because the virus is evolving faster than we can update our vaccines and in part because large numbers of people have decided they have had enough of inconvenient precautions and vaccines. Beyond the “never vaxers,” a very large part of the population is passing on their opportunity for boosters, less than 10% have had the latest booster, and many people have no intention of continuing to wear a mask.
The second current issue that distracts attention from my wish list is Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. After over seven months, we have no idea how the war in Ukraine will end, but the odds are the end won’t be pretty and may be painful, even for us. From a Ukrainian point of view, any resolution short of a complete Ukrainian victory with the return of all of its territory including Crimea, and reparations for the damage that the Russian aggression has created seems to be understandably unacceptable. From Russia’s or Putin’s point of view, there must be something gained that will seem to balance the huge price Russia has paid and will pay far into the future. A recurrent concern is that extracting justice for Ukraine threatens the rest of us because Putin will resort to escalation rather the humiliation of the loss that seems justified. It’s a dilemma because giving Putin any opportunity to save face also will threaten us all in years to come. A reconciliation of these two positions is unimaginable in almost every analysis that I have seen. The analysis in the link above is based on the historical study of how wars end. The article contains a glimmer of hope. It predicts that Ukraine will win after a long war and with the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives.
Finally, as difficult as the pandemic has been and as disruptive as it continues to be in each of its new iterations, and as scary as Putin’s insanity is, as we try to imagine some resolution to the war he started, nothing is a bigger and more dangerous threat to the world I would like to see than our continuing slide away from democracy toward our own special form of illiberalism. On September 1 President Biden, in a speech delivered at the site of the birth of our democracy in Philadelphia,  warned us that democracy is on the ballot in the midterm elections that are now less than three weeks away. Even if you think you remember what he said I would urge you to click on the link and read the speech. It won’t take long, and it is worth the effort because what he says is true, and avoiding his warning risks negating all the gains of a two hundred and forty-six-year experiment in self-governance. We have never been perfect, but most of that time we have been slowly moving in the right direction, and we have had the ability to make course corrections when we have lost our way. You may not agree with the president, and you may think that he is a tired old relic of a failed philosophy, but the fact that the speech occurred at all suggests that whether you vote red or blue, there is no denying that we are a deeply riven nation. There is a consensus opinion across our political divide that we have a problem. He said the same disturbing fact in several different ways, but the bottom line is clear–the MAGA political thought of a minority of extremists who have already demonstrated that they can resort to violence is a threat to our democracy. Near the end of the speech he said:
For a long time, we’ve told ourselves that American democracy is guaranteed, but it’s not. We have to defend it, protect it, stand up for it, each and every one of us. That’s why tonight, I’m asking our nation to come together, unite behind the single purpose of defending our democracy regardless of your ideology.
We’re all called by duty and conscience to confront extremists who put their own pursuit of power above all else. Democrats, independents, mainstream Republicans, we must be stronger, more determined and more committed to saving American democracy. And MAGA Republicans are destroying American democracy.
Liz Cheney, during the course of the nine public presentations of the January 6th committee investigations, has said essentially the same thing as President Biden in several different ways and paid the price for doing so. Her most dramatic moment was at the end of the last hearing when she said:
Mr. Chairman, at some point the Department of Justice may well unearth the facts that these and other witnesses are currently concealing. But our duty today is to our country and our children and our Constitution.
We are obligated to seek answers directly from the man who set this all in motion. And every American is entitled to those answers, so we can act now to protect our Republic. So this afternoon, I am offering this resolution that the committee direct the chairman to issue a subpoena for relevant documents and testimony under oath from Donald John Trump in connection with the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
On my recent walks, I have been listening to Maggie Haberman read her new book, Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and The Breaking of America. I have long been a fan of Haberman’s journalism and hearing her read her own writing provides a special dimension to the process of receiving her wisdom. The New York Times review of Haberman’s book was written by Joe Klein, an artful, well-known, political writer. I really enjoyed reading his thinly veiled political novel about Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, Primary Colors, published anonymously in 1996.Â
Klein begins by putting yet another book about Donald Trump into perspective:
Donald Trump is too much with us. We are stalled, rubbernecking the endless carnage of his road rage. There have been far too many books about him, with far too many “revelations.” After a while, the revelations melt into an indistinguishable muck; his boorish narcissism, a bludgeon. And so it’s hard to assess the news value of “Confidence Man,” Maggie Haberman’s much anticipated biography of the president she followed more assiduously than any other journalist. No doubt, there are revelations aplenty here. But this is a book more notable for the quality of its observations about Trump’s character than for its newsbreaks. It will be a primary source about the most vexing president in American history for years to come.
Klein’s review is a great summary of the book and the numerous points that Haberman makes in her careful analysis of how Trump became Trump. Haberman is also telling the story of how so many of us became Trump’s chumps. One of my mentors in medicine would emphasize that it took a long time for people to develop a chronic disease and if they were to get better the cure would not be sudden, but a slow process requiring great effort. I think that is what Haberman, Klien, and Biden are trying to tell us. We have some deep national problems that Trump has tapped into for his personal satisfaction and gain. Beginning the process of recovering from his influence won’t end the pandemic or defeat Putin, but unless we free ourselves from his influence and the cruel and self-centered focus that his narcissism fosters and reject the many “wanna-be” politicians running in the midterm elections who try to emulate him, it will be increasingly difficult to make progress toward the safer, better, more humane world that we could have. Klein ends his piece on Haberman’s book by saying:
We can hope that Trump is an aberration, not an avatar, but that would probably be delusional. He has created a brutish new standard for American politics, and put a terrible dent in our democracy. Maggie Haberman has been there for it all. The story she tells is unbearably painful because Trump’s success is a reflection of our national failure to take ourselves seriously. We will be very lucky, indeed, if he doesn’t prove our downfall. Â
On November 8th our votes will not end global warming or poverty, and on November 9th there will still be bias and inequality in our healthcare system, but I hope it could also be true that on November 9 we could look around and see that the majority of winners from both parties do support the basic principles of our democracy. It is also true that we could wake up in a different world where much of the progress we hope for is much less likely to ever occur.
In my state, there are two races for the House, and we are one of the states where Republicans hope to pick up a Senate seat. The choice for me is easy. In each of these contests, one candidate has the endorsement of Trump. From their own words, it is obvious that a vote for any of them would move us yet a little closer to illiberalism and the end of democracy as we have enjoyed it, even in its imperfect state. All three Republican candidates focus on the lie that electing them will end inflation and return the world to the way it was back when America was great. All three have asserted that there was fraud in the 2020 election. All three claim to be militantly pro-life. All three claim to be able to end the inflation that Joe Biden caused, but none of them mention how they will accomplish the task. All three claim to be “strong” on crime, but none of them are specific about how they will “defeat” crime. Obviously, none of them are advocates of any changes that might limit anyone’s access to guns Their message is a con learned from and supported by the biggest con artist of our times. When you go to vote, don’t be fooled and fall for the con offered by those who pledge allegiance to Trump and make their claims about what they will do to “defeat inflation” without making any plausible policy suggestions.Â
As you have probably guessed by now, I am worried. Yesterday, the New York Times pollster, Nate Cohn, reported on “The Daily”, the NYT podcast, that Republicans now hold a three-point lead in the election projections and could control both the House and the Senate after the election. Politico is predicting a Republican takeover of the House and calls the Senate a toss-up. Yesterday, David Brooks tried to explain the dramatic reversals of the last month in his column that he entitled “Why Republicans Are Surging.” Brooks notes that more people trust the Republicans with the economy, but his bottom line is that the explanation is “cultural” and speaks of “class war.” He sees it as mainstream America versus the progressive coastal elites. He uses the recent progress of Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for governor of Arizona, who has surged over the last month as an example. He writes:
…candidates like Lake wrap a dozen different issues into one coherent class war story. And it seems to be working. In late July she was trailing her opponent by seven points. Now she’s up by about half a point.
Between the pollsters and the pundits, I am feeling apprehensive. November 2016 was a terrible experience. I hope that November 2022 won’t be a similar downer. I tell myself that if the predictions about the election come true, it will not mean an immediate end to our democracy, but I have to believe that if the polls and the pundits are right and the Democrats lose both the House and the Senate to candidates like the Republicans running in my state who will owe fealty to Donald Trump, not the Constitution, and parrot his lies about the 2020 election, and seek to perpetuate his MAGA agenda, we will be one more step closer to the replacement of our democracy by an illiberal regime.
If my opinion sounds extreme, I can tell you that the Trump presidency did not foster any meaningful improvements in the social determinants of health until the near collapse of the economy forced an infusion of federal dollars into programs like the child tax credit, the hold on student debt repayment, and the moratorium on evictions. If Republicans control the Senate for the next two years, we will be vulnerable to Mitch McConnell’s ability to block any potential Supreme Court nominations from President Biden, if a vacancy were to occur. If Kevin McCarthy becomes the speaker of the House again, we can expect that Trump will have a get-out-of-jail-free card as the January 6th investigations end abruptly. According to The Atlantic, House investigations under McCarthy may be focused on Hunter Biden to create problems for the president, and the Justice Department in an attempt to harass and intimidate Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Things won’t immediately fall apart. A national bill to block abortions in all states will not pass, and if it did pass Congress, it would be vetoed by the president. What will happen for sure is that we will enter a period of even greater division and stagnation when in fact we desperately need progress. I pray that the pollsters and journalists are wrong because if they are right, we will be even further away from the world I hope exists in 2045. I hope that you will vote for a better future.
A Blaze of Glory, and Marcescence
Around my home, there are still many beautiful colors, but those colors are fading fast. We have passed our peak. Heavy rain and some stiff breezes have not helped. The combination of wind and rain has brought down a lot of the beauty. It’s inevitable, the natural order of things is for all the pretty colors to eventually fade to brown. But, it is not true that all the leaves of deciduous trees will come down in the fall.Â
We have many beech trees and oaks in our area. Beeches and oaks share the interesting characteristic of retaining many of their dead leaves until spring. I haven’t paid much attention to the oaks because their leaves are brown, but the retained leaves of the beeches are beautiful yellow shimmering ghosts through the winter that are reminders of the past summer and fall. The term for the phenomenon demonstrated by the beeches and oaks in our forests is marcescence. That’s a new word in my vocabulary, but I observed several years ago that the beech trees did keep their leaves until spring. I just never had enough curiosity to check it out. Click on the link to learn more and see a lovely picture of those yellow leaves hanging on in winter.
One tree that reliably drops all of its leaves every fall is the beautiful Japanese maple in my front yard. A few weeks ago I suggested that a good strategy for this fall would be to focus on a single tree. The header for today shows the single tree that gets attention. It is reliable. It is a gorgeous red every fall.Â
I hope that you are enjoying the fall as much as I am. Get out and enjoy the color you have before it is all gone. Have a great fall weekend!
Be well,
Gene
