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GELFAND’S WORLD - How to deal emotionally and politically with the new regime? You know, the one that is nominating a criminal as ambassador to France (conveniently pardoned by Trump in his first term) and an incompetent ideologue to take over running the FBI? With nominations intended to destroy effective environmental protection and to undo safety regulations in the corporate world? And that's ignoring the in-laws and family friends that are being offered appointments.
Here is one possible way to deal with the strife. Start with Josh Marshall's comment over at Talking Points Memo. He points out that the Trump approach is to fire off 10 flares and then figure out what he wants to do after the outraged reactions take their course. So one approach is to ignore each new outrage until it matures, which is, often enough, to die a quiet death.
And there is one other observation I haven't seen in other places: Trump tends to overreact to concerns -- even those that are legitimate -- by making outrageous threats. Take for example his latest one aimed at the Brics countries (originally Brazil, Russia, India, and China). There has been talk among some of them in terms of replacing the dollar as the international reserve currency. This is a real concern for the U.S., because we get substantial benefits from that status, even if we "earned" it by being the best preserved economy after a century of world wars and because at one time we had huge status in manufacturing. We fidgeted a lot when there was talk of moving the international oil markets into some other currency or some combination of currencies.
So what was Trump's threat? He says he will apply a tariff of 100% to every one of those Brix countries if they do the deed. I suspect that we -- and the Brix countries -- will be treating that threat as just one of Trump's many flares, and they will therefore treat it as a weak move at most.
In other words, Trump is already making a fool of himself on the international front, and it will be up to the other countries to put up with his stunts while dealing with each other as best they can.
So here is one possible way to deal with the next couple of years of Republican rule: Downgrade each Trump threat until it works its way through the system. The threat to appoint Matt Gaetz as the next Attorney General of the United States was an example. There are apparently even some Republican senators who have limits. So who knows what the appointments for FBI Director and Ambassador to France will ultimately face?
And at a different level, who cares?
And by that last comment, I don't mean that there is anything good in almost any Trump appointment. It's just that there won't be much we can do about them except wait them out and take notes on how much damage they ultimately do.
But there is one thing we as independent voters and Democrats can do. It is to insist that our side not make concessions. This depends critically on whether the Republicans in the U.S. Senate decide to abolish the filibuster. If not, then the Democrats have the 41+ votes to prevent a lot of stuff from passing. No, the appointment of federal judges is not one of them, but there are a lot of other issues. The Republicans will probably be able to extend the 2017 tax cuts for the rich by using the process by which the House and the Senate jointly work out the budgeting.
But here is where the Democrats can make their mark. Let them explain in detail exactly what the evil consequences are going to be. This will include spiking the national debt unless the Republicans take money away from Medicare, Social Security, and the Affordable Care Act.
Yes, the Democrats should take their turn playing that onetime-Republican game of warning about the national debt. They should point out how much it increased after Trump's previous tax cut and offer predictions over what will happen if the tax cuts are extended.
And then, keep reminding the American people of how much the debt is growing, month by month and year by year.
And when the Republicans ask for more money to repair hurricane damage in Florida and the other red states, just say no. Point out that the damage was markedly increased due to global warming, and as long as the Republican Party and Trump continue to play at global warming denial, the Democratic Party response should be to say, "You've made your own bed. Now lie in it."
Like I said, don't play their games, don't get in bed with the other side, and don't pretend that there is something called "working across the aisle." We remember how Mitch McConnell didn't work across the aisle when it came time for President Obama to fill an open seat on the Supreme Court.
It's time that we took some of that back and returned the insult.
But overall, we can expect that for the next couple of years, the Republicans are going to do their best to run roughshod over the national welfare and over the democratic process. For the rest of us who are not elected to the congress, the strategy is to point out to all those red states and to the states that chose Trump even marginally: "It's on you. You voted for him, now you can live with his presidency since you put him there".
There is more to this story. There is the problem of finding a way to communicate that message to people who only watch Fox News and who listen to AM radio. It's a tough challenge, but one that the Democratic side of the country ought to be concentrating on instead of ignoring.
The Hunter Biden Pardon
Just as well. If Donald Trump and a thousand insurrectionists who physically attacked our nation's Capitol are going to get off free, then why not Hunter, who did a whole lot less crime-wise than any of the above. And there is a lot to the argument that his prosecution was more than a little bit political, at least when it came to the breakdown of the plea bargain that he had agreed to. I was kind of expecting that Kamala Harris would take care of the pardon if she were to be elected, so it fell to Joe to finish the job that she couldn't. Or put it this way. Considering that the new president is announcing through his nominations that he wants to take apart the criminal justice system, the other side might as well get a few of its own taken care of before we go back to the days of mob rule.
Addendum: College Football in rivalry week
The subsidiary to professional football that is college football was, if nothing else, entertaining over the weekend. The fact that it was performed in a manner not unlike professional wrestling was a start. (And I don't mean that comment in a good way.) We'll get to the post-game brawl at Ohio State University a little later, but perhaps it's time for late adolescents and post-adolescents to learn that the word disrespect should be left behind in the adult world. If the other side wants to wave a flag, either bring your own flag or let it go.
As for the games themselves, Georgia vs Georgia Tech was the ultimate thrill and heartbreaker all in one. Tech was set up to win one of the best upset victories of a long time, but allowed Georgia to crawl back to a regular-time tie, which therefore required the college football version of the tie-breaker. Unlike, say soccer at the World Cup level, the college football version involves each team getting one possession with the team finishing ahead winning the whole game. That's certainly different from the soccer version which provides for an entire 30 minutes of post-game tie-breaker. And only then does the soccer version go to those tie breaking kicks.
So what happens in the football version if it is still tied after each team gets its possession? Well then they each get another possession, but a touchdown requires going for 2 in the conversion. And if they are still tied? Well then they just alternate 2 point conversion attempts until one or the other team is ahead.
So it is possible to do tie-breakers indefinitely. The record is 9 rounds of tie-breakers in the college game. Georgia vs. Georgia Tech went 8, and Tech's grand upset failed.
Over in Columbus Ohio, second ranked Ohio State hosted a Michigan team with a mediocre record. It was classic 1950s midwestern Big 10 football. That is to say, there were strong defensive lines, lots of fast/strong linebackers, and quarterbacks who couldn't hit the side of any of the many barns between Columbus and Ann Arbor. Even the final score of 13 - 10 was reminiscent of those olden-days Big 10 games. About the only thing missing was the full house backfield or the single wing.
And then, after Michigan held off OSU and the game was over, some Michigan player tried to plant a Michigan flag in the center of the football field. This is what some Ohio State person referred to as disrespectful, and the OSU players who were still milling around on the field took exception, and some pushing and shoving broke out. The media variously called it a "melee" or worse. But what was actually worse was that some of the OSU police then sprayed people (including Michigan players) with pepper spray. I wonder who the cops were trying to protect, and who they were trying to hurt.
Back home, the traditional game between USC and Notre Dame took place without the use of chemical warfare or firearms. This is a long and dreary era for USC in terms of the Notre Dame rivalry. The game did have this historical bit to it: The game consisted of both teams scoring alternating touchdowns repeatedly, but later in the game, a Notre Dame defender intercepted a pass on his own 1-yard line and took it back 99 yards for a touchdown. Later in the game, Notre Dame repeated that event except that this time it was for 100 yards. That's 199 yards and 2 touchdowns on interceptions that together took up less than 30 seconds of clock time.
One other curious thing about this football season. Up north, there is this place called the University of Oregon. Until a couple of decades ago, nobody really had heard of it in terms of football. There was that other place, the University of Washington, which used to be fairly dominant, but until the new millennium, OU wasn't much. And then they started running the quick count and recruiting quarterbacks and they became competitive.
So this year they are kind of alone atop the board, largely because none of the southeastern or midwestern teams has managed to go undefeated. So OU is kind of the default Number One at the end of the regular season. This will be their chance to play in another national title game provided they can make it through the 12 team playoff schedule.
But there are those two major changes in college football that we have mentioned here before. The first is that it is essentially pro-ball now because players can be paid, even if not directly by the universities. The other is that players can transfer to another, better paying school, and they can do this without sitting out a season the way it used to be.
Back in the old days, a dominant football school could recruit lots and lots of players, with the ulterior motive that some of those (pretty good) players would just sit on the bench. That way, your school did not have to face them in the regular season. And if a player wanted to transfer to another program, there were impediments.
Things have changed . . .
So suppose a pretty good high school quarterback goes to a school, only to find out that he is not the starter. In the old days, this was his fate. Nowadays, he can look around for the best financial deal and put in his transfer papers.
So practically the only difference between college football and, let's say pro baseball, is that the players trade themselves. They may call it transferring, but the salary for a top rated college football player is quite a bit more than what a pretty good baseball player got when the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles. College football has managed to create its own version (admittedly less well paying) of free agency.
The fact that college teams no longer represent the dewy-eyed, clean complexioned youth of the immediate neighborhood, but are basically an artificial construct of professionals from all over the country -- none of this seems to bother the fans. Stadiums continue to be filled, students continue to paint themselves, and the alumni have figured out how to raise support dollars in the millions. Perhaps that image of the clean complexioned amateur athlete of old is also pretty far from the truth, but in the present day, the authorities don't even attempt to maintain the illusion.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
