In their desperate attempt to gaslight the nation during our recent impeachment trial, the lawyers of our former president utilized their client’s favorite go-to tactic to create a postage stamp sized fig leaf for the anti-democracy wing of the Republican Party. What-about-ism, both-sides-ism, false equivalencies — in a word: Conflation.
Conflation, as it was employed by the defense team on February 12, 2021, was a distraction effort inspired by bad faith, and, as we have so often seen in the past, the volume and breadth of nonsense used to distract is proportional to the severity of the crime. The big…
A Chance for President Biden to Deliver a New Reality
When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Tennessee Valley Authority Act soon after he took office in 1933, it marked one of the most wide-reaching and audacious responses of an American government to the ravages of disease and destitution. The TVA was a massive depression era hydro-electric project that brought electricity, jobs and prosperity to a large swath of the American southeast. …
It’s been six months since I last wrote to you. Some of you no longer fall into the category of those who love Donald Trump, but some of you probably still do. Which side you now belong to is something I don’t know, and I’m responsible for that. Why? Because up until this point, I didn’t want to know, or more specifically, I have been afraid to know. Let me explain why.
For so many Democrats like me, Trump was a known quantity from the start. It all began in 2011 with birtherism and descended from there, to his attacks…
Here in Georgia, the definition of insanity is counting the votes from an election over and over and expecting a different result. It’s calling the Republican governor a hapless moron and a nutjob because he didn’t sufficiently suppress the vote, and it’s having that same governor authorize an investigation of voter fraud that doesn’t exist to win back the favor of the president and his disgruntled followers.
For the anti-democracy Republicans — which includes Donald Trump — no amount of proof of a fair and honest election is sufficient. Many have long been led to believe that their emperor would…
Truth in the Time of Covid
As the 2020 election approached, we were repeatedly bombarded with a particular nugget of propaganda — an assertion intended to call out the “fake news” and ridicule all those who dared to be vocal and vigilant about the impact of Covid-19. To quote the current President of the United States at one of his many ill-advised (no pun intended) campaign rallies:
“That’s all I hear about now. That’s all I hear. Turn on the television — ‘Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid.’ A plane goes down. 500 people dead, they don’t talk about it. Covid, Covid, Covid, Covid.’ …
When President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the historic Civil Rights Act in 1964, he famously said, “We have lost the South for a generation.” It was a lament from a Southerner who knew, with a stroke of a pen, that he would be flipping many millions of Southern White Democrats to the Republican Party — the Democrats who felt threatened by all those Black people, who “didn’t know their place.” …
Problem #1 Trumps all others.
It will be known for the rest of our lives and beyond as “The Insurrection”. It is also the moment when Problem #1 came closest (so far) to destroying American Democracy. At a time when widespread agreement on any topic is unfathomable, the one shared understanding we should have is that the single biggest problem we face as a nation — the one problem that is at the root of all other problems — is now beyond dispute: We the people no longer have a shared reality. This is Problem #1.
As many of my friends and readers know, my…
You have heard a lot from me recently about what I’ve referred to as America’s “Problem #1.” When we think about all of our most challenging issues, the greatest impediment to solutions is the reality that we are divided by diverging realities. Some of these divisions appear irreconcilable in the short term, as in the clash in realities over alleged massive voter fraud to elect Joe Biden. Others will become less relevant over time, as in the belief that masks do little to prevent the spread of Covid-19.
For profitability and political reasons (aka money and power), certain bad faith…
It won’t happen, but we need to imagine if it did.
Stay with me for a moment: Imagine if Donald Trump succeeded in the subversion of our democracy and managed to somehow hang on to his role as President of the United States and “leader of the free world”. Let’s play this out.
The demonstrations that would be unleashed in nearly every city and town around the country would make the Black Lives Matter marches of last summer look like a pep rally. Many millions of people would flood the streets, driven by a level of outrage never seen in…
Set aside the election results, the accusations of voter fraud, the stunted transition and the politics that go with it. And for the sake of some near-term continuity, let’s ignore for the moment the Republican effort to “humor” the incumbent president by not intruding upon his preferred alternative reality — the one in which he believes he can gaslight his way into a second term.
All politics aside, and whether you believe any of the above, one undeniable fact remains: Donald J. Trump is still our President. …
Kevin Donovan
Where there is great fear, there is no empathy. Where there is great empathy, there is no fear.
