What Does The President Do?

Getting back to one of the points raised in yesterday's post, maybe I should have been clearer about why so many people are scared shitless right now. It's kind of like a political version of the old fable about the five blind men and the elephant - we tend to perceive the nature of a wider existential threat through the prism of what matters most to each of us.

Set aside for the moment that the cause of such a high level of fear right now is because we elected someone who promised us fear, who ran a campaign based on fear. Instead let's look into some of the concerns that many are having, and what the implications and near term causal effects of a Trump presidency may be. 

Just for starters, and all based on the actual campaign rhetoric and behavior of our new President-elect (and there's lots more - it's almost overwhelming to think about the mass chaos that this elephant has brought with it):

- Immigrant families are worried that they will have their lives uprooted if they get rounded up and deported.

- Muslims are worried that they will be required to register for and be placed on a national watch list.

- Gay and lesbian couples, and their families, are worried that their marriages will be declared void, and their rights as citizens taken away.

- People of color, especially Latinos and Blacks (and I fall under this category also), are worried that they will have to live under the threat of a nationwide "Profile, Stop, and Frisk" policing policy.

- Women are worried that they will have their reproductive rights and the ability to make their own health care decisions taken away from them.
- Many women are worried about living in a society where half the population feels that sexism, misogyny and sexually predatory behavior is normal and tolerable, as exemplified by the president-elect's behavior.

- Older people are worried that their hard earned over a lifetime senior benefits, such as Medicare and Social Security, will be taken away and replaced by new systems that provide much less economic security.

- People in general are worried that a bellicose international posture will result in new wars.

- Young men of draft age are worried that those new wars will be of a magnitude that for the first time since the 1970s, the national military conscription draft will be called up.

- Those who believe the scientific truth of the threat of global climate change are worried that nothing will be done to prevent catastrophic weather events, rising sea levels, and world wide average temperature shifts in the near future.
- Everyone who recognized the very real probability that the President-elect has severe mental and personality disorders, as well as autocratic tendencies, are worried that his equally sociopathic cronies will work to erode the rule of law and enable the rise of an authoritarian state.

- Those in most socio-economic categories are worried that new tax codes will drastically reduce taxes on the very wealthy, and shift the burden onto everyone else.

- Anyone dependent on the social safety net for basic needs, such as mobility services for the disabled, special needs education and school lunch programs, the very poor on food stamps, mental health and crisis prevention services - the list goes on and on - are all worried that funding for those programs will be cut off or drastically rolled back, due to tax cuts.

- All of us who value, and visit, public spaces, parks, national parks and forests and wilderness areas, are worried about the possibility of mass privatization of public land.

- And there's more, lots more...

You Did Vote, Didn't You?

To all of you who are genuinely worried about any or all of this, I'd like to say: Thank you for voting, and at least trying to make sure that the worst wouldn't happen. To any of you who happened to vote for the candidate who promised to disrupt all of our lives, including your own, congratulations, and may you enjoy it. And to those who either didn't vote, for whatever reason, or voted for a third party candidate as a form of protest, or to "follow your conscience", I don't know what to say. Except that everyone who was paying attention, and who worked hard to make you aware of what was going on and what the stakes were, are now feeling - what? Disgust, dismay, disappointment, and next we'll just skip the "E" words and go straight to "F". Not that most of you would ever admit it now, anyway.

Well, time to lighten up. Except for the fact that most of us are soon going to be noticeably poorer, I fearlessly predict that there won't be too very much chaos and there won't be a total downfall of democracy. At least, it won't be total. Maybe dented a bit, but maybe we can get that fixed, after this dark interlude is over, if and when we make it to the other side. Hey, there's going to be a whole lot of hurt, and a whole lot of pain for many of us, but basically we're going to be okay. We're America, we've been though bad shit before, and we always survive.

The Out To Lunch Presidency

This guy who we elected President isn't some kind of evil genius, as many people think. In reality, he's something like an idiot savant, who's incredibly good at one or two things, like self promotion and competition, but basically finds it hard to put one thought in front of the other. Good thing he's rich enough to hire a staff to do his thinking (and dressing, and scheduling) for him. No way he's the New Hitler. More like the New Reagan, who was well known during his time as President for being totally out of the loop on everything going on around him, and slept through national security briefings. Reagan was a borderline Alzheimer's case who still had the ability to turn on the lights inside his head long enough to give a speech or do a photo op, up until the last days of his presidency, when he kind of drifted away.

Trump has given every indication that he doesn't really want to handle the very tough job that being President of the United States is. Back before the Republican Convention, when the hunt for  someone to run as his vice presidential candidate was on, he reached out to Gov John Kasich of Ohio, and gave him the offer of the century, the possibility of being "the most powerful vice president in history". In the Trump campaign's scenario, the "vice president would be in charge of domestic and foreign policy", essentially being the president, and Trump would "be in charge of making America great again”.

The Trump campaign didn't seriously believe he was going to win the election, and did no planning for the eventuality of a win, and are only now putting together a transition team. A few days after the election, his team was still clueless enough to think that all they had to do was show up at the White House, and it would be totally staffed, ready for them to move in. Recently, Trump has announced that he would be living at the White House only part time, and requested national security clearances for his children, who many expect will actually run the show.  He still goes on late night Twitter rants, and expresses the wish to keep having rallies, presumably to continue getting his accustomed psychic recharge. This doesn't sound like someone who was actively planning on being the new Dictator of America.

What Does The Future Hold?

So what does the future hold, and What Does The President Do? Good question, and at this point, my crystal ball is as dependable as anyone else's. No one really knows, so here goes:

A wall will be built. There's already something of a wall, between California and Baja, kind of like a solid steel fence that runs along the border. Remember, the Trump presidency, like his candidacy, will just be a media shit show, with the prime focus on optics, and not actual policy or results. So there will be a great 7 to 9 day media sensation surrounding a big concrete wall being built along a few miles of the border with Mexico, it won't be completed and will accomplish nothing, and all the reporters will go home and all of the Trumpistas will be happy.

There will be a few deportations of immigrant families, all well documented by the media, and that will be that. Nothing like the mass deportations that were promised to a drooling white nationalist Trump voter base, but enough to keep them, once again, complacent and happy. The truth is, and the Republican business elite knows this well, that our economy has come to depend upon a large workforce who are willing to work for sub-minimum wage, who demand no health care and retirement benefits, and don't dare to speak back to their bosses. The illegals will stay, as a permanent sub class, as they always have been.

The Muslim watch list isn't going to happen, but there will be a ton of talk and an active push for it; even for right wing America, absolute curtailment of liberty is going too far. The down side is that all of the media attention is only going to further incite the crazies on the right; expect some isolated violent acts and some mosque vandalizing, but that's it. That's even too much, really, but now that we know, post election, the true extent of racism in this country, it's the best we can hope for.

Nationwide profile, stop and frisk? As any one of us of color already knows, that's the way it rolls, right now, it is the way it is, national policy or no policy. As with other things, expect a lot of bullshit talk, and media demonization, but things won't change, for better or for worse. It's bad enough as it is.

For the main part, same sex marriage won't be threatened, too much. The rabid right wing Christian fundamentalists (how it pains me, who used to be a Sunday school teacher, to write those words) will always need to have something to react and push back against, and may even convince some of the more backward Southern state legislatures to enact local restrictions. There has to be some issue where the Trump presidency wants to at least appear conciliatory, and this will be it. However, if, as some are speculating, Trump resigns or gets impeached within a year, and Pence, a well known homophobe, becomes President, that's another story.

War. There will be war. With who, or why, who cares? It must have been very dull this past decade for everyone who thrives on the excitement that a run up to a war brings. So what if we wake up a few mornings later and wonder what we've done, and who is this stranger in bed with us? This country loves war, or at least the promise of one, and the whole Iraq experience will have taught us nothing. A broader point is that war is immensely profitable; for some people, nobody you or I know. Hopefully it will be a limited war, and not too expensive, without too many casualties.

On the national security front in general, wiser heads will prevail - remember, Trump will be an essentially absentee president, and in any case, he probably knows he doesn't have a clue what's going on, no matter his bluster. Expect a few well written speeches, and visits to the White House by Russian President For Life Putin, but NATO stands, and China is still at least a decade away from building the military required for their planned Pan-Asia takeover. By then, hopefully, we'll have someone in charge that does have a clue.

President Obama made the point that Trump wasn't stable enough to be in charge of the nuclear codes, and that's an unsettling thought. Hold that thought.

Reproductive rights: same as marriage equality - the radical Christian right wing needs an on-going but illusory threat to their existence in order to sustain the vitriol that keeps them funded. So look for another media shit show, a lot of hue and cry on the news shows, a couple congressional committees wasting a ton of money, and besides Planned Parenthood being completely defunded, not a whole lot of change will actually happen.

Climate change, the EPA, wilderness and public spaces, clean water and air guidelines? Republicans always want to roll it all back, and give it all way. They're going to start doing it again, and we have to be vigilant and do what we can to minimize the total harm. Donate to the Sierra Club and other natural conservation groups, so they can keep funding the ongoing legal fight.

Social Security and Medicare. It's a real hoot to think about all those dumb ass Baby Boomers who are totally in bed with a political party who openly says they're going to eliminate senior benefits. Not even waiting until after the inauguration, House speaker Ryan, with the assurance of a presidential signing, announced his planned elimination of Medicare. The fight is on, and may Grandma, and all the stupid Boomers, not starve or die of cancer until it's resolved.

As for the upcoming tax realignment, as well as privatizing Social Security and Medicare, in case you haven't noticed, the Republican mode of governance is as a kleptocracy: "Kleptocracy (from Greek: κλεπτοκρατία, klépto- thieves + -kratos rule, literally "rule by thieves") is a government with corrupt rulers (kleptocrats) that use their power to exploit the people and natural resources of their own territory in order to extend their personal wealth and political power." And they now have total power, complete control of all branches of government. And they have as their leader, one of the greediest men ever to go into politics, probably the most money hungry ever in our nation's history, who also admires the head of the world's premier openly kleptocratic government, Russia. And he, along with his cronies and his family, are going to bleed us dry. Considering that one of the members of Trump's transition team is interested in the life-extending properties of blood transfusions from younger people, that's a fitting analogy.

Keep Calm and Carry On

So relax, things won't get too very bad; what these people are really interested in is money. We're only going to get a whole lot poorer, and we'll survive that.

One Week Later

Usually, I approach doing a blog post sort of like writing or arranging a song - lay down a riff, and then let imagination and inspiration take over, and build the rest up from there. It's been an uninspiring week, and even now, it's tough to get started, hard to find a riff. And it's not just me; all around my town, and all over the country as well, there are a lot of otherwise happy and energetic people who find it hard to get up in the morning, difficult to eat with any real appetite, hard to sleep through the night without waking up worrying about the uncertain future. Even though I've had way more than my share of really crappy behavior thrown at me through the years due to my heritage, I can't imagine what it must feel like to be part of an immigrant or refugee family at this very moment.

For many millions of us, this is the closest that we've ever come to feeling as if we live in a time of existential crisis. And it's not that we all share just one issue or concern - almost everyone you talk to has their own point of view on how the results of the election threaten to upend any sense of security in their lives. Racial and cultural minorities, members of non-Christian religions, those with alternative sexual orientations, anyone concerned with women's reproductive rights or climate change or awareness of the fragility of the network of multi-national non-aggression treaties, all those and more - all are facing a very clouded and unknowable future.

If history is any judge, at least in recent American history, hopefully nothing too disturbing will happen. All of the socially charged and violence inciting rhetoric that came out of the President-elect's oddly shaped mouth may prove to have been merely campaign bluster, and that he really doesn't have authoritarian or dictatorial urges, and possibly, no deeply rooted convictions of any sort, besides his own desire for self-enrichment. If that's true, in the long run we'll be okay, although somewhat poorer. But in the meantime, those of his supporters who were lathered up into a fine froth of bigotry and hate are having their own brand of fun.

The Orange County, New York, Beth Shalom Cemetery was defaced a few days ago:

So far, the only connection between this incident and the Trump campaign is that it happened in "Orange" County.

The 100+ year old African-American Hopewell Baptist Church in Greenville, Mississippi was spray painted with an election campaign message, and then set ablaze:

Local authorities are investigating the incident, although it is being assumed that this was the work of "just some teenagers letting off steam". Sources in the area say that if it had been adults who committed the crime, they would have used explosives.

Ayman Mohyeldin passes on an email received by journalist Hannah Allam from a Senate staffer:

And in the hills of West Virginia, two local dignitaries in Clay County are happy to give fashion advice to the First Lady, and the First Lady elect:

The original Facebook post was deleted, and a hilarious "apology" post went up instead:

My local correspondent, an expert in Southern culture, assures me that these are just a couple of high spirited Virginia belles, and we shouldn't take too much offense, since "that's just the way they talk down there."

Here are the two First Ladies:

Over the past eight years, Michelle Obama has become a familiar face to everyone in America. On the other hand, so far no one knows what Mrs Trump actually looks like.

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As of this writing, no one has yet lost their lives in any of the various practical jokes, hi-jinks, church fires, and mob beatings done by America's new winners; hopefully, there won't be any. It's kind of depressing to think that the fate and future of our (already) great country has been decided by the kinds of people that leave really nasty comments on YouTube and Twitter.

In the 227 years of the history of the Presidency of the United States of America, every one of the prior holders of the office have been, no matter how you may feel about their politics and policies, all of them gentlemen. This year, a man who is the epitome of ostentatious vulgarity, nothing like a gentleman, has been elevated into power with the help of his minion Vulgarian hordes. I don't think those hordes are going to let us, or him, forget that fact any time soon.

Halloween, Demons, and Political Kool Aid

It's October 31, and here in the U.S., that means it's Halloween. For most of us who live in a post-superstition world governed by rational thought, Halloween is a festive time, when young (and not so young) kids can get into costume, go trick or treating for candy from the neighbors, and generally have a lot of fun. For those who live in a less scientific, less logical place in their minds, Halloween is a dark and truly scary time; so much so that a surprisingly vocal part of our society has called for the abolition of this national custom. I've written about that previously, in a post entitled Angels, Demons, and Charter Schools.

There's an article in today's edition of the UK newspaper Independent that highlights a recent survey conducted in Florida by Public Policy Polling. Among other interesting points, the poll finds that "40 per cent of Donald Trump's supporters believe his White House rival Hillary Clinton is an "actual demon". "  Not a figurative demon, but an "actual" one. So, let that sink in, and while you're at it, try to remember that we're living in the 21st century. It seems that a whole lot of people have been drinking from the vat of toxic political Kool Aid.

On one level, it's amusing to think that there are so many people in our country that continue to have lives that are controlled by superstition and dread. I mean, most of us pay good money to go to a theater so we can spend a couple hours being immersed in, and being thrilled by, a filmmaker's imaginary world full of dark and sinister forces. These people, on the other hand, live in those dark spaces 24 hours a day, and they don't even have to pay for that experience.

Another entertaining question in that same poll finds that 75% of Republican voters believed that their nominee "respected women, with only nine per cent disagreeing with the idea".

But getting back to reality, if that's possible here, it's more than a little disheartening that so much of our national discourse, not to mention the important decisions affecting the future of our country and the rest of the world, is being influenced and sometimes controlled by a not inconsiderable portion of the population who believe in the existence of demons, whether or not they think those creatures are running for public office.

Remember, the election is only eight days away. Happy Halloween, and may all your nightmares be good ones!

Defining A Movement: Conservative Paper Endorses Clinton, Receives Death Threats

The Arizona Republic Editorial Board

"Que no hayan novedades". May no new thing arise. In the Spanish speaking world, this old benediction is a blessing for safety and happiness, conferred upon pilgrims on their journeys, as well as those who stay at home. It's a simple wish, and in today's novelty seeking culture, it may seem quaint or even unrealistic; but deep down, most of us know that any new unknown could turn out to be the antithesis of stability and security.

Arizona's oldest and highest circulation daily newspaper The Arizona Republic was founded in Phoenix in 1890, during a Wild West era when there were still gunfights in the streets between renegade cowboys and ruthless lawmen. Throughout its 126 year publishing history, straddling three centuries and into the modern age, it has never backed a Democratic candidate for president. That editorial stance was unsurprising, and expected, given the traditionally deeply conservative views held by a majority of Arizona's population, and the newspaper itself.

Last month, when The Arizona Republic's editorial board broke with long standing custom and made an unprecedented endorsement of Hillary Clinton, it was expected that there would be subscription cancellations and many irate letters to the editor. Unfortunately, that has been accompanied over the past weeks by more than a few threats of violence, including very specific death threats, against the newspaper's editors and staff. For a quick review, CNN Money has a run down on this story, and there's an article on The Republic's website detailing how the paper is responding to the threatening behavior directed at them.

The Arizona Republic isn't the only major conservative leaning daily newspaper to endorse Clinton; so have The Columbus Dispatch, The Dallas Morning News, The San Diego Union-Tribune, and The Cincinnati Enquirer, among others. What makes the Republic's position unique is the volume of criticism and the number of threats of violence they have received. It's probably no coincidence that Phoenix is also the seat of Maricopa county, whose voters have kept Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who has made a career out of racially divisive law enforcement policies, in office for over 26 years.

Getting back to "Que no hayan novedades", we seem to be living in a time when new and previously unheard of things have arisen: Conservative news organizations are endorsing a Democrat for president. The Republican nominee, Donald Trump, regularly engages in rhetoric and behavior that smashes any sense of civility in politics. His supporters have threatened the press, attacking journalists and menacing their children. There have been threats by his fans to blow up the Civil Rights Museum.

This all may be entertaining to those of you who enjoy staring at grisly car wrecks, or see in it a setup for your revelational religious rapture, but most everybody I know are kind of dismayed by the whole scene. After this election is over, can we all just go back to stealing yard signs and yelling at each other?

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This also appeared at Blue Mountain Winter

Defining A Movement, Part 2

Not too much needs to be said here. Okay, we get it.

The sunglasses are a nice fashion touch, and add a certain anonymous mystique.

Defining A Movement

These first two pictures were taken of the crowd at Donald Trump's campaign rally held in Cincinnati, Ohio last night. If they look angry, it's because they were - at the press covering the event. Something to do with media coverage of the candidate's rather unusual style of introducing himself to women.

Here are some more from recent events:

What struck me, looking at these photos, is the remarkably homogeneous nature of these crowds. Try to find just one African American face. One Asian face. One Latino face, Native American, any people of color at all. To be fair, if you look at enough photos on the google, you'll eventually find a couple here and there. But it's not easy.

It's been said, not only by his supporters, but by the candidate himself, that Trump is America's salvation. Just what he's going to be saving us from, maybe we don't really want to know.

Kool Aid, Pt 2

In a post a couple days ago, I'd mentioned some crazy unhinged stuff floating around the right wing conspiracy-o-sphere. Who knew that anyone, except the spiritual zombies who eat that stuff for lunch, even paid attention to any of it?

Obviously, our President knows good joke material when he sees it. Oh, and also turn it around and totally marginalize his critics while he's at it. Well done.

"Literally Face Down In The Kool Aid"

This morning, longtime Republican strategist Mac Stipanovich told NPR that supporters of Donald Trump "have absolutely lost touch with reality, they're literally face down in the Kool Aid". That's an interesting metaphor, but what does it allude to, what does that mean?

Jim Jones was a "charismatic" religious leader and self-styled prophet from Indiana who started his own church in the 1950s. Moving with his followers to South America to escape what he considered to be religious persecution, Jones and his flock found, in 1978, the ultimate escape. A summary at About Education has a quick historical take on the cult's end: "On November 18, 1978, Peoples Temple leader Jim Jones instructed all members living in the Jonestown, Guyana compound to commit an act of "revolutionary suicide," by drinking poisoned punch [cyanide mixed with Kool Aid]. In all, 918 people died that day, nearly a third of whom were children." Oddly, when the bodies of the almost 1,000 dead were found, they were all laying face down.

Unfortunately, sales of the classic powdered drink never fully recovered after the incident and its associated bad publicity.

In the decades since Jonestown, "Drinking the Kool Aid" has come to mean someone or a group losing the capacity for independent thought or self volition, and diving headlong into a new belief system, often at odds to their own best interests. Mac Stipanovich may be the first to use the term "face down in the Kool Aid", and by that he may be suggesting that a large proportion, maybe even a majority, of his own party might be committing political suicide.

How has the Republican party come to this particular spot on the road? Stipanovich refers to Trump's followers having lost touch with reality, but in fact they have merely substituted the world that the rest of us sees, with an alternate reality, a new thought bubble more or less free of objective fact. Nourished on a steady toxic diet of Fox News, multiple right wing hate radio networks, and fringey conspiracy theory laden web sites such as Drudge, Breitbart, and Infowars, somewhere between 30 and 35 percent of the American public have come to inhabit a newly created social fabrication so real to them that no matter how outrageous, crazy, or demonstrably false the statements made by their candidate or his surrogates may be, they will always believe them.

As an example of the sort of crazy social cyanide available for self administration, here's Trump ally and campaign advisor Alex Jones on his webcast and AM radio show, in a transcript dated Oct 10, 2016:

"ALEX JONES (HOST): I'm never a lesser of two evils person, but with Hillary, there's not even the same universe. She is an abject, psychopathic, demon from Hell that as soon as she gets into power is going to try to destroy the planet. I'm sure of that, and people around her say she's so dark now, and so evil, and so possessed that they are having nightmares, they're freaking out. Folks let me just tell you something, and if media wants to go with this, that's fine. There are dozens of videos and photos of Obama having flies land on him, indoors, at all times of year, and he'll be next to a hundred people and no one has flies on them. Hillary, reportedly, I mean, I was told by people around her that they think she's demon-possessed, okay? I'm just going to go ahead and say it, okay?
They said that they're scared. That's why when I see her when kids are by her, I actually get scared myself, with a child -- with that big rubber face and that -- I mean this woman is dangerous, ladies and gentleman. I'm telling you, she is a demon. This is Biblical. She's going to launch a nuclear war. The Russians are scared of her.
[...]
Imagine how bad she smells, man? I'm told her and Obama, just stink, stink, stink, stink. You can't wash that evil off, man. Told there's a rotten smell around Hillary. I'm not kidding, people say, they say -- folks, I've been told this by high up folks. They say listen, Obama and Hillary both smell like sulfur. I never said this because the media will go crazy with it, but I've talked to people that are in protective details, they're scared of her. And they say listen, she's a frickin' demon and she stinks and so does Obama. I go, like what? Sulfur. They smell like Hell."

Voices like Jones are the drivers behind the alternate reality bubble that many of our neighbors, co-workers, and family members currently live in. Republican vice presidential candidate, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, who plays the role of a devout Christian on TV, has been for some years an outspoken supporter and advocate of the unscientific and psychologically damaging procedure known as "Gay Conversion Therapy". I wonder if there's a "Right Wing Conversion Therapy"?

Don't mean to be selfish, but I want my old good, decent and non-crazy America back.

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For an update to this post, see Kool Aid Pt 2.

This was previously posted at Blue Mountain Winter.

Kirk Douglas on The Road Ahead

Today, Sunday, October 9, 2016, a lot of us are obsessing on some of the more titillating political gossip, and to a lesser extent, tonight's second presidential debate. There isn't going to be a lot of movement in public perception until tomorrow morning; in the meantime, here are a few words of wisdom from someone who has been a witness to history, and been a part of it as well:

The Road Ahead

I have always been deeply proud to be an American. In the time I have left, I pray that will never change. I am in my 100th year. When I was born in 1916 in Amsterdam, New York, Woodrow Wilson was our president.

My parents, who could not speak or write English, were emigrants from Russia. They were part of a wave of more than two million Jews that fled the Czar’s murderous pogroms at the beginning of the 20th Century. They sought a better life for their family in a magical country where, they believed, the streets were literally paved with gold.

What they did not realize until after they arrived was that those beautiful words carved into the Statute of Liberty in New York Harbor: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free,” did not apply equally to all new Americans. Russians, Poles, Italians, Irish and, particularly Catholics and Jews, felt the stigma of being treated as aliens, as foreigners who would never become “real Americans.”

They say there is nothing new under the sun. Since I was born, our planet has traveled around it one hundred times. With each orbit, I’ve watched our country and our world evolve in ways that would have been unimaginable to my parents – and continue to amaze me with each passing year.

In my lifetime, American women won the right to vote, and one is finally the candidate of a major political party.An Irish-American Catholic became president. Perhaps, most incredibly, an African-American is our president today.

The longer I’ve lived, the less I’ve been surprised by the inevitability of change, and how I’ve rejoiced that so many of the changes I’ve seen have been good.

Yet, I’ve also lived through the horrors of a Great Depression and two World Wars, the second of which was started by a man who promised that he would restore his country it to its former greatness. I was 16 when that man came to power in 1933. For almost a decade before his rise he was laughed at ― not taken seriously. He was seen as a buffoon who couldn’t possibly deceive an educated, civilized population with his nationalistic, hateful rhetoric.

The “experts” dismissed him as a joke. They were wrong.

A few weeks ago we heard words spoken in Arizona that my wife, Anne, who grew up in Germany, said chilled her to the bone. They could also have been spoken in 1933:

“We also have to be honest about the fact that not everyone who seeks to join our country will be able to successfully assimilate. It is our right as a sovereign nation to choose immigrants that we think are the likeliest to thrive and flourish here…[including] new screening tests for all applicants that include an ideological certification to make sure that those we are admitting to our country share our values…”

These are not the American values that we fought in World War II to protect. Until now, I believed I had finally seen everything under the sun. But this was the kind of fear-mongering I have never before witnessed from a major U.S. presidential candidate in my lifetime.

I have lived a long, good life. I will not be here to see the consequences if this evil takes root in our country.  But your children and mine will be. And their children. And their children’s children.

All of us still yearn to remain free. It is what we stand for as a country. I have always been deeply proud to be an American. In the time I have left, I pray that will never change. In our democracy, the decision to remain free is ours to make.

My 100th birthday is exactly one month and one day after the next presidential election. I’d like to celebrate it by blowing out the candles on my cake, then whistling “Happy Days Are Here Again.”

As my beloved friend Lauren Bacall once said, “You know how to whistle don’t you? You just put your lips together and blow.”

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Kirk Douglas is a contributor to The Huffington Post, where this article was originally published.

Trumpists Threaten Civil Rights Museum After Photo Op Denied

We'd like to think that something like this would be unthinkable, except for the fact that it involves Donald Trump's presidential campaign.

The Civil Rights Center and Museum in Greensboro, North Carolina is built on the site of the Feb 1, 1960 sit in protest of racial segregation by four young college students that became a seminal moment in the history of the civil rights movement. On that day, Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair, Jr. and David Richmond sat in the "Whites Only" section of the lunch counter at the Woolworth's department store in Greensboro; the media attention from that event resulted in widespread awareness throughout the country of the segregationist racial policies then existent in the southern states.

Representatives of the Trump campaign requested that the museum close its doors to the public for five hours on September 20th in order for the candidate to stage a publicity photo op. Possibly, the word requested is a bit mild; according to museum staff, Trump's reps were "aggressive, rude and bullying". After the museum declined participation, reaction among Trump's fans was immediate, and fairly extreme, although sadly almost predictable.

Museum CEO John Swaine told The Greenboro News and Observer on this past Tuesday that since then, museum staff members have received numerous threats via phone calls and social media. Using foul language and racial epithets, “The callers were threatening to come over and burn down the building and to shoot up the building,” he said. “They’ve lessened in frequency this week, but they’re still coming in.”

When contacted, the Trump campaign declined to comment.

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This was previously posted at my commentary blog, Blue Mountain Winter.

Exhibit "A"

No words can better describe the sort of get down, get rowdy and let it all hang out level of enthusiasm that occurs at a Donald Trump rally, than the above video from the New York Times. Fired up by their idol's borderline incoherent, but very effective, rhetoric, his fans happily and loudly revel in the stew of their collective hatred and bigotry.

Anyone who might suppose, possibly in a spirit of finding balance, that anything even remotely similar has ever happened at one of Hillary Clinton's speeches, would be disappointed. Part political demagoguery, part tent show revivalism, and part wrestlemania, this sort of behavior is, in our country, unique to Trump's events.

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This was previously posted at Blue Mountain Winter.