Trump as Übermensch

Maybe Democrats have the "Trump corruption issue" backwards.

Maybe a majority of voters secretly admire his corruption.

I got a letter from a reader. He said Trump voters like Trump's wealth-seeking grift.

 Voters don't care whether Trump is getting rich; they care whether they are getting poor, and no one thinks they are poor because Trump is corrupt. Maybe Trump getting richer is a rising tide that raises all boats. 

They admire Trump. They like that he breaks rules. Just look how many heroes in media stories pull off the big heist, are assassins, or are vigilantes. Even the bad guys can wear white hats if they have enough charisma.

I have made the wry joke in these blog posts that no matter how cynical I get, it's never quite enough.

Something big happened in the past 18 years: a loss of faith that the country was mostly good and fair. There was a "before" point. In 2008 Republicans nominated a self-sacrificing war hero, John McCain, for president; Democrats nominated a scandal-free, aspirational Black man. We were offering up for leadership people who represented our best selves. But the seeds were there. McCain's campaign gained populist enthusiasm when Sarah Palin, a proto-MAGA figure, was added to the ticket.

The Great Recession of 2007-2009 changed something. The verity that home ownership was a path to wealth was proven dangerously wrong. We learned that banks and supposed referees like Standard & Poor's were corrupt. The overarching takeaway from the Great Recession was that the powerful and wealthy got rescued while the Average Joe got screwed.

The political left got cynical about American cultural virtue as regards race, ethnicity, and sexual identity. The election of Barack Obama did not trigger an enduring sense of achievement on race. The opposite idea emerged, a conviction that America was still thoroughly racist and discriminatory in everything from our laws to our language to our cultural norms. Wokeness went beyond parody. A program manager at the Oregon Health Authority postponed a meeting with community partners, explaining in an email that "urgency is a white supremacy value." Recipients who objected were pointed to a website listing the traits of "white supremacy culture." The agency's director defended her. 

The political right got cynical, too, coinciding with the election of a Black president, first with the Tea Party, then with Trump's very successful troll questioning of Obama's birthplace. It worked for Trump. Half or more of Republican voters believed Trump, not the State of Hawaii, not Obama's birth hospital, not contemporaneous newspaper reports. It reflected profound cynicism about the credibility of authority. "Do your own research" was shorthand for turning to some alternative to a supposed expert.

A "drain the swamp" message had traction for Trump in 2016. Acknowledging a swamp cuts two ways. First, that it is wrong and someone like Trump might drain it. But also, as the political left believes, that corrupt culture and institutions are intractable and systemic. So, you exploit it. You grab what you can. It is what winners do. Money, gifts, power, women. When you're a star, they let you, as Trump observed in the Access Hollywood tape. Trump grabs what he wants. Yeah. OK.

Trump is a proud scofflaw. He is unconstrained. He is Rambo. He is Hugh Hefner. He is George Washington, Genghis Khan, and Napoleon. He is Friedrich Nietzsche's Übermensch. He is Ayn Rand's John Galt.

Trump is in the show-off stage, demonstrating that he accepts no limits. He makes liberal tears; that is a positive for Republicans. This week he ran campaign-style 30-second advertisements for himself, labeled "Paid for by the U.S. Government."  He isn't bothering with hypocrisy. He is thumbing his nose at the do-gooders who protest that this is obviously wrong. Of course it is wrong. That is the point. He can do anything he wants.

If the whole game is rigged, only a sap plays by the rules. Trump isn't a sap.

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The problem with political gluttony.

Denise Krause can breathe a sigh of relief.

Her opponent, Brad Hicks, went negative and contradicted his own campaign message.

He sabotaged himself. 

It's the problem of having too much money.

I am writing again about the Oregon Senate District 3 race between Democrat Denise Krause and Republican Brad Hicks.

What is happening here has analogs that made national news: the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, where Elon Musk gave million-dollar checks to people who backed his favored candidate, and campaigns this year where lavish AIPAC spending hurt the candidate it was meant to help. This week President Trump released three campaign videos starring himself, paid for by that deepest of all pockets, the U.S. taxpayer. These, too, are backfiring. 

The money keeps pouring into the Hicks campaign. One Republican PAC, of the dozens funding Hicks, just gave another $250,000, bringing the total of it alone to $649,000. But I sympathize with Hicks' problem. People he knows send him checks, and they expect him to use them. Some are small checks, at least by Republican standards: $500, $1,000, $5,000. Some are personal checks of $25,000 and more. It would be an insult to decline the generosity and a second insult to take the money and not use it. 

So Hicks spends it. Of course he does. It is too much and too good to resist.

He spent the first half-million or so of this plentitude on a false but almost-plausible message: that he was an independent, bipartisan candidate, a former chamber of commerce CEO. Most chambers of commerce are, in fact, careful to avoid overt partisanship, but this local chamber under Hicks' leadership was the exception. It operates a PAC to help Republicans. The record shows Democrats need not apply. Hicks is an excellent Republican. That isn't an accusation. It is the record. 

Still, a half million dollars claiming bipartisanship probably shaped some impressions among voters. Few people check campaign finance reports.

Denise Krause's campaign aired an ad saying Hicks and his corporate and Republican PAC sponsors were squeezing people. I thought the ad leaned too much on out-of-date Hicks quotes, and I discouraged her from running it, but I may have misjudged its value as bait. It worked.

Hicks immediately began airing an avalanche of nasty, partisan ads of the familiar negative variety: ugly black-and-white photos of Krause and Democratic Governor Tina Kotek set to spooky music, resolving into bright sunshine, happy music, and a smiling Hicks. I have seen lots of these ads. After all, the Hicks money is pouring in and must be spent. 

First this

Now this.

The new ads contradict the first ones, creating a new meta-message for local voters: The Mr. Nice Guy, bipartisan Hicks we were introduced to was a phony. It was typical politician BS. He is revealed to be a Republican street fighter, as partisan and nasty as Trump. The takeaway is that Hicks is just one more Republican brawler, now exposed by his own campaign. Yuck.

My advice to Hicks six weeks ago was to give away most of the money to Southern Oregon University. I knew he would not take the advice. Hicks may have two million dollars by now, and this is a tiny media market. He has a weapon too good not to use. We are going to see what a brute-force campaign can do. That is self-defeating. The received message of a gigantic brute-force campaign by the Republican party is brute force itself. And the Hicks campaign has turned brutish. 

Hicks' money made Krause's case for her: If you like what Trump has done to our politics, you'll love Brad Hicks. This is a light blue district at a time when Trump's GOP is at a low ebb of support. She could not have made that case stick on her own. No one would have believed it coming from her. Only Hicks could do it, by doing it to himself.

Irony is not dead.

I urge readers to check my work. Go to the Secretary of State's website and see where Hicks gets his money, and what his Chamber of Commerce did with its own money. It is the opposite of bipartisan. Click the "Campaign Finance Transactions" tab on the left, then enter his Campaign ID, 24485, in the box. To see whom the Chamber PAC supports, enter Campaign ID 5067.

You will see.

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Is the ad I created fair?

Is it wrong to expect Republican officeholders to speak up when they see Trump's corruption?

President Trump reported making $2.2 billion in income from crypto investments with open pay-to-play conflict-of-interest dealmaking. 

Republican officeholders see this and do nothing.

I know they think it is wrong. After all, they saw President Biden indulge his screw-up addict son Hunter, and they shouted bloody murder. Hunter got hundreds of thousands. The Trump family scams billions.

Republicans in Congress are silent in the face of corruption. In a few years, when the era of Trump has ended,  I hope Republicans who are silent now would say that they hated this all along. They could say they always hated the crypto grift. They might say they never agreed that presidents could impose tariffs or fight wars without Congress' approval. They might say they never thought Trump won the 2020 election in a landslide. That would be the good outcome. They would be expressing embarrassment at what they allowed and pretend it didn't happen.

But that is not a sure thing. 

Trump is normalizing corruption. It has become open practice, not the exception. Trump doesn't hide it. He celebrates it. This deepens the cynicism people feel about government. Republican inaction ratifies the normalization. Our democracy becomes weaker. If even a very few Republican representatives voiced their disgust, they could change history for the better. Say it and vote it: Corruption is wrong and un-American.

I dislike negative political ads, but I like truthful ones that make a clear point. I think this mock-up ad is fair.

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Easy Sunday: Are data centers OK?

Funny video.

Or maybe it is scary, not funny.

We asked Artificial Intelligence to tell us if data centers were OK.

Answer: They are great. Like meadows and kittens and smiling faces on young women.

Yeah, it's funny.

CLICK:   https://babylonbee.com/video/we-asked-ai-to-give-us-the-unbiased-facts-about-ai-data-centers

It's Sunday. Both the Ducks and Beavers won a football game. The weather will be clear and in the low 70s in Medford, Oregon.  And we are as young now as we'll ever be. Enjoy the moment.

Yes, I could have a blog post trying to explain why "recursive self improvement," in artificial intelligence are both very good and very dangerous. And maybe I would be better for understanding it well enough to explain it, and readers would be better for understanding it more thoroughly. But let's chill out instead. Watch the video: three minutes.

(The fact that AI would not experience the desire to chill out today, and does not experience the emotion of "enjoy," and instead would tirelessly use what it knows to teach itself new things, and having learned those things will use that knowledge to teach itself yet more things with even greater capabilities, and with those capabilities even greater ones, and so on, all day today and every day, is one reason why AI is both very good and very dangerous.)

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Out of many, one

Today: The Medford Multicultural Fair, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Pear Blossom Park.

Free. Fun. Food. Music. Dancing.

I realize that diversity is a fighting word for some people. Food, music, customs, and language from other countries -- the countries of immigrants to the U.S. -- are spoken of as implied disrespect to "heritage America."

The Multicultural Fair takes the opposite approach. New food, music, customs, and language aren't diluting America. They are building it. It is on display.

The event is oddly patriotic. 

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Born on the government dime

Nobody likes the present U.S. healthcare system.

The disagreement comes in what to replace it with.

I asked some friends with long careers in healthcare delivery what they thought would make sense. Mark Knudsen focused on insurance contracts. Bruce Van Zee, M.D. suggested Medicare for All. Today's guest post is by Joe Yetter, M.D.

As a patient/customer, I am very happy with Medicare. My wife and I have monthly premiums totaling some $1,500 based on the sliding scale, so it isn't free, but it is fair if one accepts the notion of progressive taxation. It is simple from the patient perspective, and providers know how to work with it. Is it "socialism?" I suppose, but so is fire insurance, and I am accustomed to that and see its value. Medicare does the insurance function of spreading out to a pool the costs of healthcare. Medicare seems to work.

In 2022 Joe Yetter was a Democratic candidate for Congress in Oregon's 2nd Congressional District, but lost to Cliff Bentz. He lived and worked within an even more socialized system: the one for the U.S. military and its veterans.

Guest Post by Joe Yetter, M.D.

I was born on the government dime, and I expect to die on the government dime. Everyone should have this same good fortune! With a long, healthy life in between, of course.

I'm "entitled." My dad joined the Army on December 8, 1941, and served for over 20 years, including several years in combat in Europe. I joined the Army in September 1968 and served (with a break in active duty) until February of 2004. My dad's service and my service earned medical coverage for him and his family, and for me and mine as well.

Joe Yetter, being sworn into the army by his father

My own experience with government-run health care started before I was born; my mom received her prenatal care at Madigan Hospital in 1946. Dad was, at the time, part of the Army of Occupation in Japan; I didn't meet him until I was six months old (and peed in his face, I am told).

What I believe: Health care is a human right. Government of the people ought to provide medical care for all the people. And society will be better off for that.

What I know, from my experience and education: Good care is good for everybody.

I trained in, practiced medicine in, and have been a patient in military facilities, VA facilities, and civilian facilities, in several states, and on three continents. My experience—as a doctor, and as a patient—is that universal coverage, and especially government-run health care, is far superior to what's available in the broader civilian world.

When I practiced medicine in the Army, I never had to consider whether my patients or their insurance would pay me. If a mom brought her child in with an ear infection, I'd prescribe medication and know that she could pick it up at the pharmacy a few steps away, all free of charge, and that the return visit would be free of charge as well. The system would alert me if she didn't pick it up. In my long career in military medicine, I never once got that alert.

When I practiced medicine in civilian life, I routinely fought insurance companies, delivered news to patients that medical services had not been covered, and saw patients be worse off for lack of coverage. I witnessed dying patients and their families bankrupted and fighting insurance companies while they ought to have been grieving together in their parting days. Never, ever in the Army. Human beings deserve better.

I earned considerably more in civilian practice than in the Army. I was a lot happier in the military, and that experience was nearly universal among physicians I knew over many decades. I had several colleagues commit suicide in about ten years of civilian life, and none during my decades in the military. (That's my own anecdotal experience. Suicide rates among physicians are higher than in the general public, and veteran suicide rates are higher than civilian rates. I could find no data comparing suicide rates between military and civilian physicians.) Nurses, techs, and other personnel seemed to me to be a lot happier in the Army, too, and the atmosphere seemed a lot less hierarchical—a real paradox, I think.

Retired

What I'm saying is: Coverage for everybody is good for everybody—patients and medical personnel alike. And better for taxpayers, too: right now, we spend over 17 percent of our GDP on a flawed, family-bankrupting "health care" system, while most other developed nations, many with lower per-capita GDPs, spend between 9 and 12 percent. These nations have better health care and longer lives than we do. We are paying nearly twice as much for worse results. What we are doing is neither smart, nor compassionate.

We are better than this. We are smarter than this.

Aren't we?

What I want: An Improved Medicare for All that covers all medical care, including mental, dental, vision, podiatric, and everything in between, that is medically indicated and provably efficacious. No copays, no deductibles, no prior authorization, no complex paperwork for patients or their doctors. I'd exclude glamorizing cosmetic surgery, unproven "alternative" medicine, bogus fad nutritional stuff, and anything for which we don't have good evidence.

 

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Republican Brad Hicks

Is it "negative campaigning" to call Brad Hicks a Republican?

I dislike negative campaigns.

I like truthful ones.

Brad Hicks is an excellent Republican.

Hicks is inundating local TV viewers with ads claiming he is bipartisan, independent, and not part of a political party team. In most ads he doesn't even mention that he is a Republican.

This is dishonest.

Brad Hicks is a Republican.  He has been promoting Republicans for decades. He is being funded by Republican PACs with the expressed goal of electing Republicans. He is on the Republican team.

The Greater Medford Chamber of Commerce that Hicks headed has been a generous cheerleader and funder of campaigns of Republicans for decades. Hicks' Chamber even formed its own PAC to funnel money to Republicans. The Chamber PAC collects donations from banks, electric and waste utilities, and construction companies, many with contracts with local governments, then passes that money to Republican incumbents heading local governments. It is cosy -- a tight loop of friends helping friends --  but it is also 100 percent legal. Hicks' Chamber PAC donated to Republican legislative candidates when Hicks was the Chamber CEO, and now that he has retired and is running for office, he gets the favor returned, with a $25,000 Chamber check earlier this week. Republicans helping Republicans.

Hicks received $200,000 so far this month from a single Republican PAC on top of the $195,000 it gave him earlier this summer. Plus, he gets pass-through money in $50,000 chunks from incumbent Republican state senators who transfer money from their campaigns to his. It is perfectly legal to build a party team by giving megabucks to candidates in a love-bomb of money. I am not condemning Republican solidarity or its show of force. But I am describing it in the face of Hicks' ads that claim the opposite. 

Brad Hicks is a Republican. He is joining the Republican team. He shouldn't lie about it. 

Follow the money. Check my work. Go to the Secretary of State's website and see where Hicks gets his money, and what Hicks' Chamber of Commerce did with its. It is the opposite of bipartisan. Click on the "Transactions" tab on the left. Then type in his Campaign ID at the box: 24485. To see who the Chamber PAC supports enter the Campaign ID 5067.

You will see.

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A Democrat in a rural congressional district

Follow-up, part two, to the Chris Beck event at my home

"I am not throwin' away my shot
I am not throwin' away my shot
Hey yo, I'm just like my country
I'm young, scrappy and hungry
And I'm not throwin' away my shot
It's time to take a shot."
          From "Hamilton," the song "My Shot," 2015

 

Chris Beck

The mood was resolute.

Not discouraged. No false optimism, either. Chris Beck and the 40-plus attendees understood the challenge Beck faces: trying to get elected in a solid-red rural district that has regularly rejected electable, personable, politically adept Democrats by 20-something-point margins.

Beck has become a very competent candidate. He is articulate about the problems facing the country, and he talks about them in a pleasant, slightly self-effacing manner that comes across as common-sense and natural. Certainly not bombastic. He sounds like a reasonable, politically moderate guy who says things that both Democrats and Republicans might have said 15 years ago, back before Republicans went MAGA under Trump's spell.

(What the heck happened to Republicans? Ronald Reagan, both Bush presidents, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Oregon's Mark Hatfield, Tom McCall, and Vic Atiyeh: None of them would be welcome in today's GOP. What a shame. What a bad turn for the country.)

Beck spoke, of course. So did Democratic State Senator Jeff Golden, the incumbent in Senate District 3, a light-blue island in an otherwise bright-red 2nd Congressional District. Golden's district is the most urban part of the congressional district. The Democratic brand is weak in rural America. It isn't just the urban party. It is the condescending-to-rural-America party. 

Golden made the case I have been trying to make in this blog: This election is not about how good and capable a candidate Beck is. I am reminded of lines from the 1960s songbook, this time from the Lovin' Spoonful:

You didn't have to be so nice
I would have liked you anyway

Beck is a good candidate, but candidate quality isn't the point this year. Beck is a message, as simple and blunt as a telegram. Electing Beck is the way voters can express frustration with the Trump-led status quo. It would be the proverbial cannon shot across the bow of the Trump era. It would tell GOP officeholders in supposedly safe red districts that an era has ended.

The incumbent Republican, Cliff Bentz, staked his ground. Bentz is part of the GOP caucus that lets Trump be Trump. No objection, no criticism, no pushback. Iran war: OK. Crypto grift: OK. Cutting the Medicaid that keeps hospitals afloat: OK. Bashing vote-by-mail: OK. Pay-for-play swamp cronyism: OK. Trade wars: OK. Tariffs: OK. Ballrooms, arches, his name on buildings, his face on coins, midnight ranting tweets: OK.

And don't forget the fuel and grocery prices that come with all of it.

Trump is on the ballot. Beck is not the representative of the Democratic brand, with all its complications in rural Oregon. He is getting around the district telling people they have an alternative to the status quo. Electing Beck would send a stripped-down message: If you like Trump, vote for Cliff Bentz. If you’re sick of Trump, vote for Beck.

Beck has a shot.

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A Democrat runs for Congress in a rural Oregon Congressional District

Follow-up, part one, to the Chris Beck Meet-and-Greet at my home.

Chris Beck addresses a group of 40

A Democrat can win election in rural Oregon. It has been done. But it was almost 50 years ago: Al Ullman.

League of Conservation Voters scorecard

Oregon Democrat Al Ullman represented a largely rural district for 12 terms, from 1957 to 1981, becoming in his final four years the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee. The district included most of the area in the current 2nd Congressional District, where Beck is a candidate. The incumbent Republican, Cliff Bentz, has a political problem: he is a steadfast supporter of a flagrantly corrupt president whose  healthcare policies are bankrupting local hospitals and whose policies on tariffs and beef are hurting local farmers. Chris Beck has his own political problem. He is a Democrat. 

Democrats were going through a brand realignment in 1980, when Ullman lost his seat. Ullman's poster read "Protect and develop the 3-R's: Rivers, Ranches, Resources." Democrats now emphasize the protect, not the develop. Rural voters notice. I won election that year, notwithstanding a platform that supported land use planning that would zone rural lands to reduce development. 

Reagan wins; Ullman loses; Sage elected

How did I manage that? Perhaps it helped that my occupation was "melon farmer." I was selling a simple product to fruit stands and a large supermarket, Thunderbird, that had a blue-collar, poor-side-of-town customer base. I came across as plausibly rural and not elitist. I drove a beat-up Ford truck, for real.

The Congressional District is Republican because it is rural. The Democratic brand reads to rural Americans as urban, white-collar, hostile to resource use, and contemptuous of them. Too woke. Fussy, not earthy. Think Prius, not Ford F-150. A white male politician on a horse wearing a cowboy hat is very probably a Republican. A person in an audience at a political event in Medford who objects to the phrase "hold down the fort," considering it to be a racist reference to cavalry garrisons and settler colonialism, is certainly a Democrat. 

Tam Moore, a journalist for seven decades so far, was a TV reporter at KOBI and wrote for The Capital Press, a specialty newspaper focusing on agriculture. Moore remembered when a Democrat could win in rural Oregon.

Barbara and Tam Moore

Guest Post by Tam Moore

Sunday afternoon jarred loose memories for me as I listened to a good candidate for Oregon’s 2nd Congressional District seat – Chris Beck – and some recent political history told by a long-time acquaintance, State Senator Jeff Golden. Golden recounted how the sprawling 2nd District hasn’t elected a Democrat since the redistricting which followed the 1980 census.

What I thought about on that sunny afternoon by Peter Sage’s pool was the last Democrat to represent Oregon’s 2nd District – Al Ullman.

Ullman, a real estate developer and builder from what we now call Baker City – it was just Baker back then --  jumped into politics in 1954, running for the 2nd District against first-term Republican Sam Coon. Democrat Ullman, an advocate for public development of hydropower in Hells Canyon, lost by 6,256 votes.

Golden

He tried again in 1956, the year I graduated from college, and won by a couple thousand votes. That launched a career of effective representation in Congress from 1957 through all of 1980. In a District which then included not only all of Eastern Oregon with its ranches, timber, mining, and vast open spaces but also a bit of the Willamette Valley brushing the state capital in Salem, Ullman was so popular that in 1972 Republicans didn’t field an opponent.

He’s the guy who legislated 61,000 acres of disputed land for the Warm Springs Indian Reservation, got recognition for the Burns-Paiute tribe, led the way in creating the Hells Canyon National Recreation Area and helped get the Pacific Northwest Power Planning and Conservation Act through Congress. With his seniority, Ullman rose to chair the House Ways and Means and Budget committees.

His name is on committee reports for national bankruptcy, tax and public debt law; Ullman’s work is reflected to this day in how Congress goes about writing budget law. Ullman was present and voted in over 7,000 roll calls during the 23 years he served on the Hill.

All of that came to an end in 1980, the year citizens unhappy with President Jimmy Carter’s handling of the Iran hostage crisis turned a sitting president out of office. It was the year of the Ronald Reagan landslide. That year every county in the 2nd District went for Reagan. Ullman, in a three-way race for a 12th term lost to Republican Denny Smith, son of an Oregon governor and publisher of some weekly newspapers.

The final tally was Smith by 3,795 votes out of 290,748 cast. Lloyd Marbet, an activist fighting against nuclear power plants, received 10,787 votes.

In a post-election interview with United Press International, Ullman blamed defeat on “a series of innuendos."

“None of those things were true, but if you say them in the right way and say them often enough, people are going to believe them,” he said.

My recollection at the time was a campaign that beat up Ullman for not spending much time in his district as he tackled those federal budget and fiscal issues.

All of this history has some relevance to Beck, and to his opponent, the incumbent Republican Cliff Bentz. Once again there’s an unpopular president and an incumbent not all that visible in his district.

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The Trump-Kennedy Center

     "The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Restored and Renovated By President Donald J. Trump”

Trump wants his name on the Kennedy Center. He is holding it hostage. Put his name on it or he will raze it.

That drew a protest, a "Hands Around the Kennedy Center" rally.

The organizers hoped 500 people would participate; 950 signed up on line; about 6,400 people showed up.

Jack Mullen and Jennifer Angelo were among them. 

Guest Post by Jack Mullen

KENNEDY CENTER EFFECT

I am often asked how I, a former Oregonian, can stand living in Washington, DC. Easy. Growing up in Oregon, I found comfort in trees, parks, creeks, and the joy of experiencing four distinct seasons, the same as I do in Washington, DC.

When out-of-town guests visited our family in Medford, we enjoyed mixing in the wonders of Crater Lake and the Rogue River with side trips to Ashland and Jacksonville, just to add some cultural variety. Now, when out-of-town guests come visit us in Washington, I find the same joy in showing off Washington as I did when entertaining friends in Oregon.

Among the unlimited variety of sights to see and visit in Washington is the Kennedy Center. Just a drive-by is inspiring, and its history as a cultural center is unmatched. My wife, a DC native, has more than a passing relationship with the place. She saw Cat Stevens there on her 16th birthday in 1971, shortly after it opened. She saw The Who perform Tommy, a traveling production of Show Boat, Kathleen Battle in one of her late recitals, many Messiah sing-alongs, and more operas and symphony performances than she can count. She used to fantasize about living in the Watergate next door and wandering up the street for music or theater any night of the week.

If anyone wanted to visit the Kennedy Center this summer, they often had to navigate street blockades due to a variety of White House-sponsored wrestling matches and car races. National Guard personnel patrol our streets. Fences surround the Reflecting Pool, Lafayette Square in front of the White House, and now the Kennedy Center, which Trump is threatening with the same fate as the demolished White House East Wing.

 

Along with thousands of others, my wife and I attended the September 18 rally to save the Kennedy Center. I sensed many attendees at the rally were of the ilk that felt inspired when once asked "what can I do for my country" by JFK. Some said they felt helpless when President Trump demolished the East Wing, and felt impelled to use citizen power to stop a similar fate for the Kennedy Center. Others were performers whose events had been canceled. Most were long-time patrons like my wife defending an old friend. The crowd covered the plaza in front of the building and the grassy area around it. The rally featured music, speeches, and chants, and ended with a chain of people holding hands around the building. As we faced the tarp covering the letters on the front, the crowd yelled, "Tear it down, tear it down!"

The master of ceremonies was Tara Hoot, a well-known local drag queen dressed in red, white and blue. She is a board member of the protest's organizing group, Hands Off the Arts, which was formed when Trump appointed himself chairman of the Kennedy Center. Lynda Carter gave a heartfelt speech extolling the arts, saying, "Music and arts is how we actually survive. It is how we learn. It is about vibration in the universe. It is about our souls." Congressman Don Beyer (D-VA) spoke for about a minute, ending with, "Mr. President, have you no decency?" Congressman Jonathan Jackson (D-IL) said, "The Kennedy Center will forever be the People's House. This is not the Melania and Donald Trump house!" Mallory Miller, a union leader and dance curator, said, to loud cheers, "I didn't grow up on a farm in Indiana getting Medicaid and free school lunches to be called an elitist by a bunch of billionaires."

The Washington Gay Men's Chorus sang of demanding justice. A New Orleans-style band roamed the plaza, playing "This Little Light of Mine." Opera singers and a string quartet played as protesters gathered. The National Anthem and America the Beautiful were sung. There was plenty of talent to go around.

Trump lost the support of the community when he appointed himself the cultural and financial boss of the Kennedy Center, culminating in the sudden installation of his name on its face. When a court made him remove his name, he covered most of the remaining letters with a tarp, and held hostage $256 million in funding. So here we are, with renovations on hold and demolition on the menu. I hope Friday night's protest made an impression somewhere in Trump's circle. We can be sure it won't move him because, as one sign at the protest said, Trump is no JFK.

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Easy Sunday: Push reset on your mental map of the world

Just look at this map of Earth. 

Absorb it. Let this image slowly creep its way into your consciousness.

We've been lied to, and it is time to accept a new mental map of Earth.

The true scale, with elevations

The true scale: countries labeled

Our mental map of the world is a matter of politics and status. It establishes the relative position and sizes of continents. Maps get labeled. The "Gulf of America" implies that the Caribbean is ours, U.S. turf, and that Cuba, for example, is in our gulf. The "Gulf of Mexico" implies to an American that the gulf is an international space we share with other countries. Cuba is not an interloper in the Gulf of Mexico. 

The sizes and positions of continents act similarly. Gerardus Mercator created the useful Mercator projection in 1569 and it has been in widespread use for 200 years. It made the lines of longitude parallel, which aided ship navigation. It became the standard view of the world in the U.S. when Earth is depicted on a flat map. We saw it in school. We didn't just "learn" it; we absorbed it and presumed it. How could we not? 

It was a comfortable view for Americans and Europeans. We weren't just on top; it made us bigger. Africa and the equatorial south got small. 

The most powerful ideas are ones we absorb as assumption. It is hard to look at a Mercator projection and not absorb the idea that North America and Eurasia, are more significant to the world than Africa and South America. The fact that Greenland was bigger than Africa is a statement.

This shows where the distortion takes place:

Give yourself a gift. Learn something new. Stop reading here and bring your eyes back up to the top two images, and gaze on them for another moment and be open to resetting your map of the world. First impressions are hard to change, but give it a try.

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