Igniting Fear

LOSER

Back in the day the pugnacious manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Leo Durocher, after losing a game because of a call by an umpire, complained “We Wuz Robbed”. Most fans thought so too.

When Donald J. Trump saw early internal polls that indicated he was going to lose his bid for reelection, he said “The only way I can lose to Sleepy Joe Biden is if the election is rigged against me”. Most of his fans and the Republican Party believed him. Most still do.

But Trump, perhaps the most psychologically damaged man to ever hold the Presidency, is saddled with a disease embedded in him by his father, Fred: that there is nothing worse in life than a loser. Calling someone a loser, was Donald Trump’s worst put down of another individual. To be a loser, is to be cursed.

Feeling like one himself – now and possibly the for the rest of his life – is far worse a fate than a second impeachment…or even financial or legal trouble waiting for him once he is a private citizen.

It seems his only hope for personal redemption is that he can run again for the Presidency in 2024. He has raised hundreds of millions in support of his “fraud” claims and he promises to hold rallies and work against those Republicans who finally found the strength of belief to oppose his false claims.

Anything is possible unless the Senate votes to convict him of the impeachment charge and deny him the opportunity to ever hold public office again. That is a penalty he cannot abide.

And so this man, who has proved every day of his Presidency that he clearly thinks only of himself, arranges to encourage a select mob of sympathizers to storm the US Capitol- with obvious help from inside – causing chaos, mayhem, shock and most of all fear among the legislators who were in session to approve the election results found valid by the Electoral College…an act of formality only that ends the election process.

Just to make certain that those who would oppose him get the point, Trump called out his most devoted partisan, Vice President Mike Pence, for refusing to stop the process even though he had no legal right to do so.

Thus the mobs’ shouts of “Hang Mike Pence” “Hang Mike Pence”.

Up until this moment, Trump has had four years of success at causing enough chaos to do all he ever needed to do: basically cut corporate taxes and deregulate industry. Now he has gone further – not just to cause fear among opposing politicians but to strike fear throughout the country – a country sick and dying of a disease killing more Americans than any other country in the World.

That fear of further chaos has caused a lockdown of Washington DC before the inauguration of a new President and a careful watch in State capitols all around the country.

Joe Biden has waited all his political life to become President of the United States. And just when it looked like Vice President was as close as he would come, he is elected President in the greatest turnout of voters in American history.

The demand for government action may be the greatest any President has known since Franklin Delano Roosevelt back in the years of our Depression.

Roosevelt’s message then could stand as one now “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”.

Today the fear of more wild right-wing military activity pales at the fear that new vaccines cannot be delivered fast enough to stop the waves of sickness and death – which actually, stunningly increase daily as strains of Covid 19 seem to be attacking everywhere like an unstoppable wave unleashed by an earthquake.

And here at this moment comes Joe Biden, a policy-centrist but inside that reality, a genuine liberal….maybe the first since Lyndon Johnson.

Because there is a simple explanation for the difference between a liberal and a conservative when it comes to the role of government in our lives.

Conservatives believe that the least government involvement, the better. The smallest government is the best government. Just make traffic lights go red and green…could sum it up.

No matter the Republican leadership, that party which has always espoused conservatism believes in the power of Capitalism or more conveniently, the marketplace. It rules this country as not since the Robber Baron days of the turn of the 20th Century. Once it was steel, railroads, automobiles…now it is Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google…the use of money and what and who it can buy.

No matter whether it was Reagan, the Bushes or Trump first you cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy. Then you deregulate as much of industrial and corporate America as you can…and you say the economy is booming even if people with money are the only ones making more.

The result is that as the wealthy gain, the rest loses…as we have lost what used to be the Middle Class.

The long lines of cars waiting daily for food in America now underlies the reality of poverty in this country.

And the biggest charge that will come from this conservative approach to small government which stays out of the way, is Joe Biden’s call to make $15 the national minimum wage.

For liberals the role of government is exactly opposite. Liberals see good government has the only entity large, rich and powerful enough to control Capitalism at its most voracious and inhumane…where the almighty dollar and only the almighty dollar rules the ebb and flow of the country.

It is nice to think that a concern for social good is enough to mark someone as a liberal. But while that feels good – it is not the genuine definition.

Good government will do what America prides itself on the most – freedom, opportunity for anyone not just the fortunate, justice against the pressures of our economy.

When it works as it did for more than fifty years during the 20th Century it made America the greatest power in World history. People could buy a house, educate their children right through college, retire with dignity and a sense of accomplishment.

Joe Biden will reinstate a fairer tax policy, re-regulate the corporate and industrial structure, try to get our children back to school, work to lift those in poverty.

The Democrats barely control the Senate and House. Traditionally they should be able to make some of the changes we are hearing about even before the inauguration. We will see how the Republican Party deals with him.

He will call for unity.

We will see how America responds.

We have no ready answers for the immediate future but we are heartened by a letter to the Bergen Record written by a Nun who has been writing to and praying for Donald Trump for months hoping to inspire humility and wisdom.

“Then I found myself just praying for him, that he should understand that he’s a beloved person of God and that other people are too.

“I think this has helped me in a practical way to get to the heart of what faith is all about. When you pray for someone, you can’t hate them.”

Politics and prayer rarely go hand in hand…although much is made of it.

But perhaps in this moment of time as we hear talk of unity few believe is possible, one must take note and say “Amen.”